Pixelation.. is it always bad ?

Quite a lot of my artworks incorporate pixelation.. and I quite often get comments from photographers and printers about it.

>In my experience many photographers and printers judge image acceptability according to photographic criteria.. and they use the same standards to judge artwork as they do photographs. They look at the work through a magnifying glass to check for clarity and that pixels are not blown. I often deliberately blow the colours and incorporate pixelation, I'm not really interested in good photographic quality, it's not what my work is about. I want  to stretch the digital medium to its limits.. I like to think this "rough unfinished look" is in part what attracts clients and buyers to my work and I do have plenty of buyers.

I look on it this way.. if someone is painting you wouldn't reject the painting because the  brush strokes are visible. So why is it a problem if pixelation (which is an inherent characteristic of digital art work) is visible or deliberately incorporated ? I want my images to have unplanned elements and rough edges I wonder if in 100 years from now.. the ever more detailed and clean digital photographic images will be of any more interest than the old grainy black and white photos of the pre-digital era ?  Personally I doubt it. If a printer/client/photographer is going to judge my work by photographic standards my work is always going to fail. 

For me the above detail has lots of interesting contrasts and nuances going on.. 

I'm not ashamed of the fact that I am using the digital medium.

Constructive comments welcome

Andy Merer
Andy Mercer's website