Collage Art

Artists Describing Their Art:

Silvia Poloto - Artist statement on PROCESS: Private Puzzles 2010 - 2011 I am drawn to the idea of abstraction, where meaning is not absolute but suggestive. Throughout my career I have worked in many different media: drawing, printmaking, painting, photography and sculpture to name a few. My photographic works, at the core, are "equivalents" of reality. That is to say, I create scenes or objects to be photographed, rather than illustrate existential situations. The process is an internal one inspired by personal experiences and imagination. My latest body of work combines processes I have used in the past, expressing the visual vocabulary I have already learned in new contexts. I begin by building plexiglass boxes, filling some of them with resin and others with wax. I then make drawings, which I print on transparent film and build up in layers on top of each box. I repeat this process until I am satisfied with the result and, then, I photograph it. Initially, I wanted to print very large-format photographs on watercolor paper. However, the high cost of printing such large pieces was prohibitive. A fellow photographer, and friend, offered the use of his own printer, but it was smaller than what I...

Donna Gallant - Art is a daily routine in my life. I see, hear, taste, feel and smell the life that surrounds me and I am inspired by the simplest aspects of this world. Whether it be the way the light hits an object or the way objects or forms move in space. I find it all so fascinating and alive. I try to portray these experiences and expressions through my art making....

Mario Ortiz Martinez - The main distinction of an artist is, or should be, insanity or, at least, the tendency to think and do absurd, showy, original and little comprehensible things for the common man. In particular, what attracts me the most is sharing my work, to the point of asking for very low prices. simple peanuts sometimes or flatly give it to those who appreciate it. Try me. This site requires a price standard. Very understandable and logical. But I would never refuse a reasonable offer. Just thinking about continuing, about having a penny to buy more colors and keep producing. Even when my works consist of a simple paper and in a small format, I always want to show my commitment to people, in order to brighten up a small corner of the house and invite reflection on the beautiful, the harmonious, the good vibes of the world. Some of these works have served as a study for large-format painting, but I have to honestly say that the study always looks better than the enlarged copy. In art, the first impulse, the first pictorial phrase, the first flash of inspiration, the first painted word that comes from the heart, is the ...

Emilio Merlina - I was born in 1950 in the North East of Italy from a polish mother and a sicilian father. I toured the world until I was 35, then I returned to Italy and picked up again my old passion painting and sculpture. As for myself, I can only say thoughts and paintings, paintings and thoughts. Everything maybe useless, however everything is life. i?1/2The human being leaves its signs, graffiti, indian dreams and imagination. Now I only have left a few more possibilities to express the colors which are not. Only the sign, scratched, angry or brushed is the witness. The sign has passed from there and there it has lived.i?1/2 Emilio Merlina Some hear if a door opens Others hear a latch which opens or closes Others more they hear the Angel when he turns over a page of the Great Book From the novel Missa Sine Nomine By Ernst Wiechert I have words which relegate my hunger And the hunger which owns my body but which do not confine them I have words which are both my confined hunger and body By the Italian poetess Paola Lovisolo ...

Stephen Mead - In the early 1990's Stephen Mead's poems began appearing in such journals as Onionhead, Bellowing Ark, and Invert, but upon moving to Provincetown, Mass., Stephen decided to concentrate more on visual work. It was in the year 2000, after moving back to NY, that Stephen started seeking publication again for both his writing and his art combined. Since, then, thanks to the wonders of the World Wide Web, his work has appeared internationally both in cyberspace, hard copy, and physical Gallery Space. Often the writing has appeared along side his paintings, and at other times with the text superimposed. In 2004 Stephen began experimenting even more with these poetry/art hybrids creating a series of e books, including the award winning "We Are More Than Our Wounds". From there Stephen began experimenting with his art and poems as films, at first creating slideshows with captions, and then doing his own soundtracks and voice overdubs. These DVDs are available through Indieflix.com In 2006 Stephen put this technology to use releasing a CD of poems set to music "Safe & Other Love Poems" (CDBaby.com), as well as two print editions of his image/art hybrids, "Selected Works" and "Tree ...

Jose Luis Lazaro Ferre - I think the easiest way to define my activity as an artist and my intellectual approach to art would be to quote Apollinaire's thesis in his Les Peintres cubistes: meditations esthetiques, especially the following sections: ... Therefore, as an offer to the spirit, in the plastic arts, the fourth dimension should be generated by the three known dimensions: represented by the immensity of space eternally present in all the dimensions of a given moment ... Cubism differs from the painting that came before it because it is not the art of imitation, but the art of thought raised to the level of creation ... Scientific cubism is one of the pure trends. It is the art of painting new compositions with elements taken not from visual reality, but from the reality of knowledge ... Physical cubism is the art of painting compositions with elements taken primarily from virtual reality In my painting, I work with geometric figures arranged on different planes that overlap one another and blend into real shapes (bottles, cats, birds, fruit), fabricated objects (small origami birds and paper boats) and everyday things (hats, shoes, etc.) to create a world of mystery and sensuality. The lines I draw are ...

Rickie Dickerson - I work from the core, I smear my guts on the canvas, all the pain and confusion...joy, lust and anger...right before your very eyes. I have to paint, I have no choice. My mentor, Luise "Mignon" Andersen, introduced me to acrylic paint and threw me deeper into the river of creativity. Everything I do is just to keep me from drowning... As for the photography, that's compulsive as well....

Tamara Sorkin - I have always worked from organic subjects- plants, animals, or the human body, but usually I arrive at an abstract, "zoomorphic" description, that enables me a wider perspective. ...

Tom Lund-Lack - I am an experienced artist whose work uses the power of imagination to find find the essence of the subject.A It is grounded in the need to celebrate life, and to portray the subject through the transforming power of colour and light. Arrangements of shape, line, pattern and colour are brilliant at conjuringA up powerful expressions, sometimes these can be dreamlike and at peace sometimes exciting and dramatic. My work does not always represent an actual moment, place or object in time, but they areA the result of a process of reflection, recollection and reinvention, a distillation of experience. Art is a very small word having the widest possible meaning appreciation is a subjective judgement and no artist or workA can please everyone.A My aim is to please at least some of you and I am very confident that this aspiration is achievable ...

Claudia Nierman - Some words about my work: The images I produce are deliberately enigmatic and multi-layered. They invite the viewer to engage in the process of storytelling whereby dreaming and living are woven together as a tapestry. I find the sources for my work in the urban environment: window displays, torn posters, graffiti, broken architecture. In short, the remains of man. These objects and situations are eventually transformed by rain, sun, reflections, and shadows, as well as additions made by the passerby. Shaped by the forces of chance, these ephemeral visions are captured on film (and now also in bits and bites) and used as raw material that merge one into another forming a new identity. The result? On one hand, a strange amalgam of my preoccupation with time and memory, and on the other, the way in which the deliberate manipulaton through photographic images can give us insight into our personal and collective struggles. Technical information: I usually work in three different formats: 25 cm x 30 cm and 32 cm x 45 cm printed on cibachrome paper; and a large format of 57 cm x 80 cm, digitilizing the final image and printing it on canvas. (Since this latter ...

Claudia Nierman - Hope Brooks - I am often asked the question what is my work about which is a little like being asked what is life about because in art as in life each person must bring their own experience and provide their own answers. Quite simply my work is about life and the enigma that surrounds existence. I make reference to specific experiences or draw on visual reality to act as a frame to the broader content and people bring their own interpretations as well. When I began painting in the 60's I was focused on talking about natural phenomena that I found around me in Jamaica, such as the sea, the mountains, or the moon but I was also trying to find a language that expressed the essence of that place I called home. In 1980 I travelled to Baltimore USA and my visual surroundings changed completely. This city had none of the natural landscape but it had beautiful stained glass windows and during my year at the Maryland Institute I produced a large body of work called "Windows". This included prints as well as paintings of the secular as well as the ecclesiastical windows. Someone looking at the work once said ...

Hope Brooks -