Daily Mail collages, enlarged and printed on plexiglass.
These first months of 2018 find me tightening up concepts and working on pieces for an upcoming solo show at Spark Gallery in September... the current working title is "Branching Out." I'm also looking forward to showing with fellow collagist Lili Francuz at ReCreative Gallery in December. There's much to consider as the work progresses and sometimes sends me in slightly different directions than I'd originally anticipated. And that's also the wonderful, challenging, discovery-filled part of it!
Lately I've been thinking a lot about the philosophical underpinnings of my work. Last night I attended a panel discussion at the Clyfford Still Museum titled "Painting/Non-Painting" featuring artists Stephen Batura, Terry Lee Maker, and Sarah McKenzie. There was a lively discussion about how the act of painting continues to evolve, photography's use in painting, and just how blurred the boundaries of painting have become — the "elastic nature of painting," as one of the panelists put it. It made me realize that while I tend to label myself a "collagist," my working intention/philosophy puts me squarely within the "painter" realm even though I work with bits of photography/color rather than pigments.
While not such an issue for a traditional painter, I'm always wondering how to work bigger and stronger when my raw materials are mostly quite intimate in scale. In some cases, I've teamed up with art consultants to enlarge certain collages for installation in corporate or health environments. I love that the dot detail and ripped edges are revealed and yet they still read well from afar. This week it was exciting to see a sampling of the "Daily Mail" collages enlarged to about 3 feet tall and printed on plexiglass for an upcoming corporate installation... note doorknob for scale (below).