ARTIST STATEMENT

During the past century artists have consistently used the materials of their time and world to reflect, and reflect upon, contemporary culture.  In 1946 the Abstract Expressionist artist Robert Motherwell stated, “The sensation of physically operating in the world is very strong in the medium of the papier colle or collage, in which various kinds of paper are pasted to the canvas.  One cuts and chooses and shifts and pastes, and sometimes tears off and begins again.  What an inspiration the medium is!  The painting mind is put into motion, probing, finding, completing.”

My recent artworks reflect a continued exploration of experimental collage production and the use of print media and visual journalism.  Each work consists of borrowed print media imagery arranged on and applied to a flat thirty-six inch square two-dimensional ground. These experimental collages are the end result of a process of retrieval, giving new life and meaning to newsprint that would otherwise be discarded and sent to recycling plants or landfills. 

Multiple copies of daily newspapers are the source of my work providing duplicate images of information, documentation, and narration.  Intuitive impulse and the powerful seduction by basic elements of design influence the search and selection of mechanically printed images. Isolated from context, fragments of visual facts transform into objective components of space and time and become the basis of the analytical management and reprocessing of imagery.  General principles of design combined with constant visual stimulation and exposure in our multi-media culture offer guidance in the creation of new and abstract figurations. These figurations, constructed areas of repeated images, become unified through systematic arrangement .The juxtaposition of these figurations creates a visual world that lacks a clear contextual narrative; however, it is a world that is both active and alive.