2024 CCMag Awards!

November 8th, 2024

“This year has been the biggest one yet for the Contemporary Collage Magazine Awards. We received almost two thousand entries across all six categories and the calibre of work has been outstanding.”
— Les Jones and Molly Campbell
 

 

Delighted to announce that my collage landscapes have earned international recognition from Contemporary Collage Magazine, with a Bronze Award in the Nature Series category. The jurors also placed my LITTER-ALLY KENTUCKY artworks in the overall “Series Shortlist.” The England-based publication has set an impressive standard for worldwide coverage of our artistic medium. My thanks to the panel of judges, with congratulations to fellow award winners, including friends Teri Dryden, Allan Bealy, and Robert Voigts.
 
   

It is gratifying not only to have my particular area of concentration gain recognition, but for it to be in the context of a wider acknowledgment of representational collage as a vital approach to the medium. I give great credit to CCMag for their ongoing salute to “collage as painting,” and to all the 2024 competition adjudicators.

 

Above Curtis Road
Boyle County, Kentucky
 
collage en plein air by J A Dixon
11 x 8 inches
part of the LITTER-ALLY KENTUCKY collection
giclée print available

Posted in A Bealy, Collage, En Plein Air, Honors, J A Dixon, Landscape, Publications, R Voigts, T Dryden | No Comments »

Annual Small Works Invitational

November 1st, 2024


 
It’s November! I’m pleased to share a notice for SMALL WORKS and that my collage landscapes will be a part of this group exhibition at Kleinhelter Gallery in New Albany, Indiana.
 

Posted in Exhibitions, J A Dixon, Landscape | No Comments »

My backpack of backlog . . .

October 23rd, 2024

 

 

 

Although I aspire to create landscapes outside into the colder months, my season seems to be winding down. The number of unfinished artworks has become a significant backlog, so I shall be boosting my finishing hours in the studio. The ongoing challenge for me is always to preserve with minimal refinements the collage improvisations that I achieve en plein air.

Posted in En Plein Air, Landscape, Methodology | No Comments »

A remote knobland outing . . .

October 17th, 2024

 

 

   

Apparently this is the way I look when I’m “in the zone.” Thanks to Joe F for the photo. Monday was a splendid day on the Knob, but a contrast from when I began a collage painting there a year ago. I could never bring myself to touch that “start” in the studio, so I decided to sit in the same spot and to pick up where I had left off. Now I’m finally eager to finish it inside without ruining it.

Posted in En Plein Air, J A Dixon | No Comments »

Collage in the U.P.

September 30th, 2024

 

Spent a chunk of September “painting in papers” while in the Les Cheneaux Islands. This recent method of pasting collage ingredients over a crude charcoal sketch really started to grow on me.

 

Here is an interim stage of completion for “Up the Channel.” The water foreground needs to be finished and softened. The shoreline can benefit from a few more details. Please stand by for the final version!

Posted in En Plein Air, Landscape, Les Cheneaux Series, Methodology, Technique | No Comments »

A successful close in Frankfort, Kentucky

September 25th, 2024

“The only thing that you absolutely have to know, is the location of the library.”
— Albert Einstein
 

If you want to make something happen, ask a librarian. Diane Dehoney is one of the best! Bringing our enjoyable collaboration at Paul Sawyier Public Library to a successful close was not my favorite part of having a show there. Heartfelt thanks to everybody in Frankfort.

LITTER-ALLY KENTUCKY is back in storage, but I want to send it on the road again for more to see. If you know a good location for it in 2025, please let me know!

 

Posted in Collaboration, Exhibitions, J A Dixon | No Comments »

Mirthiness

September 7th, 2024

“The first step is always to succeed in becoming surprised.”
— David Gelernter
 

I still find it rewarding to work very small, and to have an image of the finished miniature appear to be a larger-scale original. Yes, I know. It doesn’t take much to entertain a collage artist in the studio.

 

Mirthiness
collage on book cover by J A Dixon
7 x 5 inches
available for purchase

Posted in 1) Available!, Collage, Merz | No Comments »

Watch my LITTER-ALLY KENTUCKY show promo!

September 1st, 2024

   

 

   

My sincere thanks to Brett Smith and Diane Dehoney for bringing this media coverage to YouTube and for promoting the show at Paul Sawyier Public Library. My collage landscapes infused with litter are on display in Frankfort for three more weeks.

Posted in Exhibitions, J A Dixon, Landscape, Video | No Comments »

Evolving creative intent with similar subjects

August 30th, 2024

“The writing and playing of music is a matter of intent…. You can’t just throw a paint brush against the wall and call whatever happens art.”
— Duke Ellington
 

There are so many old farmhouses and barns in our Knobland region of Kentucky, and they always hold my rapt attention as I interpret them in found papers. It is necessary, however, for me to quiet my busy mind and discover a soul connection to a particular natural place and the evident stewardship of those who have cared for it. Then, and only then, can I apply an intent to coax my intuition in an expected direction and to handle paper and paste with creativity.

I am pleased with what I achieved on the top half of this small canvas. The foreground is now due for an efficient studio finish.

Check out my series of posts that have described a seven-year plein air adventure, “painting in papers.”

 

At Walnut Springs (unfinished)
collage en plein air by J A Dixon
on stretched canvas, 10 x 8 inches
Plein Air Artists of Central Kentucky

Posted in Collage, D Ellington, En Plein Air, J A Dixon, Landscape, Methodology | No Comments »

Double or nothing . . .

August 23rd, 2024

 

Dixon appears again at Art Space Versailles, hopeful that a buyer might be interested in the collage artwork called Renewal.

I scheduled a double event this week and it was a fine way to saddle up and ride a momentum. I was eager to point out that Renewal was on consignment at Art Space Versailles.

The studio piece began with my musing on the cyclic life of trees, which makes sense because I’m endlessly fascinated by them and since I work primarily in papers after all. Most collage artists are scroungers at heart, so I had turned to my stash, searching for potential ingredients. I found more than enough for a 12×12-inch canvas and intuitively assembled a “ground” of these found images. I think that toward the end of the process it had became as much an abstract composition as an interpretation of my thematic idea. I didn’t want it to appear too abstract or purposely surreal, so, at the closing stage, I crafted a literal seedling from individual paper components, more in the representational manner that I use for collage en plein air. I guess one could say that the culminating element pictured the birth of a tree, but, as with all life cycles, who can say when the beginning or ending actually occurs. The art itself is re-purposed paper, a clear ending for a tree, at least until inevitable decomposition takes place, and then another cycle of renewal carries on.

In contrast, the exercise in spontaneity featured below had no preconceived intent and originated as a demo miniature during my exhibition-related workshop at Paul Sawyier Public Library in Frankfort on Tuesday. I refined and completed it last night during the appearance in Versailles as a guest artist. The unfinished piece had been immediately titled by a workshop participant after the primary ingredients were juxtaposed, and I just couldn’t top her suggestion!

It joins countless other artworks that tip the Pop-ist hat to Andy Warhol (Campbell’s Soup) or Ray Johnson (Lucky Strike). But the grandfather of Pop Art was Kurt Schwitters. So much of contemporary collage is, in essence, an homage to the German innovator, and I never tire of working in the Merz tradition that he pioneered a hundred years ago.
 
 

Kick the Can
collage experiment by J A Dixon
7 x 8.5 inches

Posted in 1) Available!, A Warhol, Collage, Dada, Demonstrations, Exhibitions, Experiments, Homage, Ingredients, J A Dixon, K Schwitters, Merz, Pop Art, R Johnson, Titles | No Comments »

Stigma

August 11th, 2024

This collage miniature started as an intuitive exploration, took root as a study in color and form, then resolved itself as an exercise in compositional refinement.
 

Stigma
collage on book cover by J A Dixon
5.6875 x 8.875 inches
available to collectors

Posted in 1) Available!, Collage, Experiments, J A Dixon | No Comments »

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