COLLAGE

“By art alone are we able to get outside ourselves, to know what another sees of this universe
which for him is not ours, the landscapes of which would remain as unknown to us as those of the moon. ” Proust

Cut and Paste Realities

"Reigning Beauty Queens"

If intuitive painting is a dialogue with formless Source within, collage/assemblage is a complementary dialogue with manifestations of the Sacred without, a humble acknowledgment that no one and no thing exists in a vacuum and that each of us is but one of billions of myth-making mash-up artists co-creating both personal and collective realities from a staggering stock pile of visual and conceptual information.

Unlike my paintings and drawings, which are usually precipitated by a singular, often unexpected, visionary flash or compelling kinesthetic impulse to move color across a surface, my collages begin as a blank slate, an open ended invitation for dialogue via pre-existing forms as I sift through thousands of photos and bits of paper, fabric, ribbon and other intriguing cast-offs encountered on the road of life.

This is art as scavenger hunt, a search spontaneously defined through tangents of association. I shuffle paper and sift through mental and material files seeking resonance, with only vague ideas of how various scraps of information might relate to one another. I select some for color or shape, some for style or subject, while others arrest my attention through an arcane alchemy arising from their seemingly random juxtaposition in the piles of paper accumulating on the table top.

As in all my creative ventures, I’ve learned to go along with these intuitive choices even if they don’t make sense at the time because sooner or later, vague connections become more focused, conscious and purposeful; images cluster and ideas coalesce, kicking up the voltage, revealing fresh insights into the questing creative psyche, as I entertain Jungian musings of anima and animus, the necessity of contrast, the manifestations of shadow, the visual and esoteric implications of rhythm, balance and symbol relative to the times in which we live.

My collages tend to emerge as series rather than singular works as the process of association favors multiple avenues of development from the same seed images, providing an opportunity that linear time does not for exploring more than one of the possibilities branching out from every juncture of choice. The white bird or the black? The red pill or the blue? Why not both? So many rabbit holes to explore...

I’ve encountered, over the years, a bias against collage, suggesting it is not as legitimate an art form as drawing, painting or sculpting. I understand this point of view, after all, collage often incorporates work done by other designers, craftsmen or graphic artists. It could be considered “cheating” in that sense, to ride atop the labor of others, and yet this is precisely what collage teaches us: most of our necessities, comforts and conveniences are possible because of a vast, invisible sea of cooperative hands and hearts, millions of minds over many generations making it possible to get hot water from the tap, fly to the other side of the planet, and instantly see what someone else sees of the world at the touch of a button.

We live in a cut and paste reality. Like magpies, we build the nests of our beliefs and subsequent experience with shiny snippets of desire, fact, fiction and opinion appropriated from the myndscapes of countless others, yet somehow we manage to arrange, re-arrange and recreate our self image and world view into something utterly unique.