“Bad Artists Copy. Good Artists Steal” Pablo Picasso
For many of my collages I steal Geometry. I have stolen Geometry from Henri Léger, and Bruce Conner for past series. I take a small section of a painting as a template for the design, which I then develop over time. Making many modifications in the process. For the current series “Facing East” I have stolen small sections of Geometry from Matthew Bielen, an Artist from whom I bought an abstract collage. I ran into his work when I took a Impressionist Landscape painting class in Provence Town, Cape Cod, 2 years ago. Also I like to use Chinese Characters in my work. I just like the way they look. I am not telling any story with the Chinese writing. I don't know what it says. I just like the way they appear in the collage. I also use various papers with different textures, which give the piece almost a 3 dimensional appearance. During the process of making the first “Facing East” Mixed Media, I wasn't happy with the finished collage. I decided to use the idea of Japanese Brush Strokes. I saw some Black Brush Stroke abstract paintings in the background on a TV Show. The artist was Franz Kline. I watched several videos of the Japanese Brush Stroke technique. However when it came time to add the Black Brush stroke to a finished collage, I realized that each attempt was different and I could not rely on myself to make the perfect brush stroke and ruin a collage that took several days to make. So I made several brush strokes on paper and picked the best one, cut it out and pasted it to the collage. As you can see I do a lot of cheating to achieve my final piece. My collage work starts by selecting graphic components to fit together in the geometry, with a color palate and then evolves into a final design. I don't necessarily tell a story. That is up to the observer.
