My Collage Work
Souls waiting to be born and reborn.
Take a look, it's in a book... I really don't know what happened. I started out intending to make a Disney themed collage but sometimes art does what it wants. Halfway through I started hearing the theme song from Reading Rainbow in my head.
I had been planning to do a grayscale collage for some time, and I finally got around to it.
I may write a story to go with this one. Perhaps the lighthouse is there to guide starships through the nebula by tracking the swarms of space jellyfish...
A lot of this one is made from the seasonal paper covers on bottles of Stella Rosa Black.
A collage I did over Halloween 2019. The central image is the insert from my daughter's ghost-bride costume.
I wanted to create a piece that conveys Eros as a concept.
"You are looking for the Water of Life. You want to be able to love, that's your only hope of getting back to your world. To love - that's easily said. But the Water of Life will ask you: Love whom? Because you can't just love in general. You've forgotten everything but your name. And if you can't answer, it won't let you drink. So you'll just have to find a forgotten dream, a picture that will guide you to the fountain. And to find that picture you will have to forget the one thing you have left: yourself. And that takes hard, patient work. Remember what I've said, for I shall never say it again." -Michael Ende, The Neverending Story
Nothing seemed solidly one thing or another. The shifting sands beneath his slippers were also the infinite stars; the walls were at once peeling blue paint and plaster, and a panorama of celestial bodies, birthing, burning, blowing away, all in an instant. Butterflies escaped their chrysalides, only to fold back into them, soften and be larvae once more. The only constants were the lintels and posts of the ancient doorways, one beyond another, curving away into eternity.
"Where am I?" Imran whispered.
And from all around the answer pressed itself into his skin: "You are in the Corridors of Time."
Inspired by Swan Lake, of course.
I knew immediately that I had to put these soldiers together in a collage that would look like the cover of a military adventure novel. Now, if only someone would write the novel to go with it.
I am currently attempting to write a story to go with this one.
If your heart be sick and weary,
Worn with deeds of might and worth,
Come and seek our sanctuary
Across the cracked, sun-blasted earth.
If the burdens that you carry
Become too merciless to bear,
Come and seek our sanctuary;
There is peace and beauty there.
Leave your armor, leave your blade,
Leave behind the name you made,
Climb astride the sailing stones;
Sate the longing in your bones.
Where glide the whales as green as jade,
A gate of glacial ice is made;
And cities, risen from the snow,
Float on the death-cold depths below.
This only took three images pasted together.
A very simple one, only four images pasted together. I liked how the aqua anemone complemented the color and shape of the light source above, and the contrast of the orange.
Fan art, of a sort. I was thinking of this as a possible illustration for an unwritten Oz adventure.
I found a large, mildly damaged cat poster in an old RV. Its corners were tattered from being tacked on the wall and it had several spots where grease had been spattered on it, but it was still pretty so I put it away to use later. It sat in my closet for quite some time. I finally decided I wanted to do some mild death and resurrection symbolism with it, so I surrounded it with white flowers (death) and butterflies (resurrection). I also felt it needed an extra touch so I experimented with some small touches of glitter on each butterfly and in the cat's eyes.
I have mild synesthesia - many artists do, in fact, including more than a few famous composers. Lizst, for example, was noted to have instructed an orchestra to "play more purple, the piece demands it." I once spent an incredible quarter of an hour listening to a sunset, which sounded like the brass section of an orchestra, with a solo on french horn. And more than a few of my favorite pieces of music make me see the ocean. This sort of came out of that.
This one was made at the request of my sister, who is a chiropractor. She wanted something "abstract, with a brain and maybe a nerve cell" that she could hang in her office. People tend to think of chiropractors as spine doctors, but they are more properly nerve doctors - they adjust the spine so that the nerves may transmit their signals properly. My thought behind this was to convey a sense of what the brain and nerves are capable of when they function at peak efficiency.
At the time when I cut out the central image, I actually had no idea who Lady Gaga was. I just thought it was a neat image.
I made griffins.
A fantasy forest scene.
I call the robot Fibonacci.
I found the central image of the old man in a National Geographic magazine. He was blind, so I gave him stars for eyes.
Pretty much what the title says.
A folk figure I made up myself. Her cloak is the night, and the stars are holes nibbled in it by her many moths.
There's a story behind this one, I just don't know what it is yet.
A tribute to Edgar Allan Poe.
Ra, Egyptian God of the Sun, usually pictured with the solar disk over his head and often taking the form of a hawk or falcon. The heron at his feet is the Bennu, his heart-soul.
I wanted something that felt a little unsettling or disturbing.
I wanted to create something that flowed from black and white to color, to convey what music and other art forms do for the human spirit.
In Greek mythology, Argus Panoptes was a giant with one hundred eyes, the servant of Hera, who set him to guard the heifer-nymph Io from Zeus. When Zeus sent Hermes to slay Argus, Hera commemorated the giant by preserving his eyes in the tail of her favorite bird, the peacock. I wanted to create a female version of Argus. Perhaps she is his daughter. In any case, this is Argosa.
There are several butterfly migrations that take place on Earth - perhaps the most well-known is of course the Monarch migration from Mexico through North America and back again, but there is also the migration of the Painted Lady butterfly through California. Suppose such migrations were to exist on a much grander scale?
In Arabic folklore, the Marids are Djinn associated with the open waters of the oceans and seas. They are the most powerful type of Djinn, as well as the most arrogant and proud. Like other Djinn, they have free will, yet can be compelled to perform chores, and have the power to grant wishes to mortals, though this usually requires battle, imprisonment, rituals, or else a great deal of flattery.
An old one, but I still like it.
I conceived this as a sort of alternate ending to the original Frog King story. In some fairy tales, the hero or heroine, realizing that their mate's animal form can be taken off and put on again, destroys the sloughed animal skin by throwing it in the fire. But this is almost always a mistake, and for their impatience the hero or heroine loses their mate and must wander the world in search of them until certain conditions are met. In one such tale the heroine had to search until she had worn out a pair of iron shoes, broken an iron staff, and eaten a loaf of iron bread. In this version, the princess must find her true frog in a cave filled with every kind of frog.
I love fairy tales, especially those in the vein of Beauty and the Beast, which The Frog King (or Prince, in the usual English translation) is. There are others, such as Bearskin, Hans the Hedgehog, and even versions where the genders are reversed, such as Queen Cat and the Russian tale of the Frog Princess.
This was made as a gift for my sister, who loves frogs. It's an earlier one, but I like the way it came together.
This was a much earlier collage, but I still like it. Gold is symbolic of immortality, because unlike silver, copper, and other metals, it does not react with oxygen and therefore does not rust or tarnish. Butterflies are symbols of transfiguration, often associated with the soul's transformation upon the death of the body.
I had been gathering dragon pictures for years, and I finally had enough to make this collage. It's the first really big collage I ever did, 24x36 inches.
I finished this collage in 48 hours, which was a mistake because by the time I was finished I had the mother of all headaches. But I was on a roll and didn't want to stop.
I consider this a sort of "transitional" piece between my old style of collage and my current style, which is more focused on conveying a sense of narrative. It was inspired by the song "Africa" by Toto.