Painted Paper Collage

My painted paper collages based on observational drawings celebrate visual moments in the immediate environment. When I incorporate the figure, rather than having a person pose for me, I prefer to watch someone moving spontaneously. When I approach a new subject, I make a lot of gestural drawings and representations of the space in my sketchbook. I construct my collages directly from the drawings. The collage, while not a copy of the drawing directly, is informed by it and cultivates its vital spark. In this game of telephone, absent from the subject, color becomes exaggerated and specificity varies. 

In a screen-heavy world, I luxuriate in the analogue process of translating a drawn image into little slivers of paper. The collage accumulates slowly, much like the lived experience if we allow ourselves to be truly present. Negative and positive shapes are equivalent powers that play off of each other.  If I’m making a chain link fence, I cut the diamond shapes in between the fence wires as I’m making the fence itself. Working this way allows for small anomalies to happen, like a green shrub that bleeds over into a building. 

My work continues with a heightened focus on abstracting the figure. I like to draw people until the shapes of the figure, a certain stance or posture, become familiar. So that if someone knew my subject, they would recognize them without a portrait being part of the work.