2002 Notes on Collage and on my collages
nfluenced initially by the work of Picasso and Schwitters, I have become convinced that collage/assemblage is THE art form in this age of immediate information, computerization, and global capitalism with its mass marketing and invasive visual pollution.
Due, in large part, to the new technologies which present everything as information from which to choose and connect in any way we can, the idea of collage influences every aspect of our lives.
As an art form it is a non-linear process of construction which leads to unforeseen meanings, sometimes amusing, sometimes profound. Found images (along with hand-made images) assembled for their visual form, can reach new and complex levels of meaning. They can also be aesthetically pleasing and thus transcend the bounds and limitations of the specific time in which they were made.
All my collage and assemblage work, and much of my abstract painting, grows out of the idea of making new connections between apparently unrelated images, shapes, colours. I arrange things, bring them into relationship with each other, juxtapose them. I use a lot of found materials, the ephemera of daily living. Exploiting chance in the finding, and in the pairings and grouplings, I arrive at a synchronicity which is both the means and the source of my delight in making the work. I am fascinated by the way disparate found objects, when placed together, signal levels of meaning which go beyond their previously held associations. The whole IS more than the sum of the parts.
I think poetry works this way too – as when each word, loaded with its meanings and allusions, is linked to another, also loaded. The patterns gradually become more complex as more words and meanings proliferate. It is like life, a parallel pattern to happenings through time. So I think of these assemblages as visual poems, sometimes quite (auto)biographical and always full of meaning for me. Each viewer is welcome to read them as personal messages.
nfluenced initially by the work of Picasso and Schwitters, I have become convinced that collage/assemblage is THE art form in this age of immediate information, computerization, and global capitalism with its mass marketing and invasive visual pollution.
Due, in large part, to the new technologies which present everything as information from which to choose and connect in any way we can, the idea of collage influences every aspect of our lives.
As an art form it is a non-linear process of construction which leads to unforeseen meanings, sometimes amusing, sometimes profound. Found images (along with hand-made images) assembled for their visual form, can reach new and complex levels of meaning. They can also be aesthetically pleasing and thus transcend the bounds and limitations of the specific time in which they were made.
All my collage and assemblage work, and much of my abstract painting, grows out of the idea of making new connections between apparently unrelated images, shapes, colours. I arrange things, bring them into relationship with each other, juxtapose them. I use a lot of found materials, the ephemera of daily living. Exploiting chance in the finding, and in the pairings and grouplings, I arrive at a synchronicity which is both the means and the source of my delight in making the work. I am fascinated by the way disparate found objects, when placed together, signal levels of meaning which go beyond their previously held associations. The whole IS more than the sum of the parts.
I think poetry works this way too – as when each word, loaded with its meanings and allusions, is linked to another, also loaded. The patterns gradually become more complex as more words and meanings proliferate. It is like life, a parallel pattern to happenings through time. So I think of these assemblages as visual poems, sometimes quite (auto)biographical and always full of meaning for me. Each viewer is welcome to read them as personal messages.