Collages 2
Since 2007, I have created collages, ranging in size from 7.5 inches x 9.5 inches to a little under 14 x 17 inches. These small works are like poems or musical etudes. The reduced size "forced" me to "say" what I wanted to "say" in a succinct manner. That doesn't mean that these pieces don't get complex and layered to the point of being "baroque," but they are meant to be small, something that draws the viewer in, asking him or her to enter a sometimes microcosmic rather than macrocosmic world. Media used include crayons, colored pencils, ink, metallic pens, charcoal, graphite pencils, and watercolor pencils. Papers include Bristol Board, heavy stock drawing paper, watercolor paper, and/or tracing paper. There were two ongoing sources of inspiration for these collages. One was music, the other was my great love of the natural sciences. The forms/structures and myriad colors that I found in my study of geology and astronomy were particularly influential. Each piece should be seen as a kind of spiritual improvisation in which a specific vocabulary of images, shapes, colors, and techniques gets "played with." They are poems, they are prayers, they are improvisations, they are explorations.
NB: Because these are collages often comprised of multiple overlapping layers of paper, a 2D image will not fully capture the "depth" or the subtle "shadowing" that occurs in the actual work of art.
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