Minke's digital art consists of highly modified photographic images with a lot of symbolism and a strong erotic content. Most of the images are of beautiful women, fantasized and combined with symbolic images to represent a mythological or spiritual theme. Some of them are very well done, some are more traditional. Some were quite reminiscent of the work of fellow Austin artist Howard David Johnson with whom I've worked on a number of projects over the years, though Minke's work is more symbolic and less sophisticated than Johnson's. There's room for more technical development and sophistication in Minke's work, but it's got a strength of vision and a passion which is very appealing. Some of the fantasy pieces are very impressive and his integration of the photographic and illustrative elements is quite good, with an overall result which is both realistic and clearly original and creative.
Minke also does work in other media and custom work on assignment. He does very bold semi-abstract oil paintings, some of which I saw at the festival and more of which are on display on his website. He also does commercial photography and even some rather eerie animation work. He's a hard working artist with a lot of irons in the fire, but I think he's one to keep an eye on. His work may not show up at MoMA anytime soon, but that may be more their fault than his. He seems to be doing pretty well selling his originals at fairly respectable prices (I couldn't justify the price for his wood stain dragon which I really wanted) and I think he has a lot of commercial potential as an illustrator as well. He's very much an Austin kind of artist, combining high tech with tradition and fantasy with reality.
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