Exhibitions « The Collage Miniaturist

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Eighth Chapter: Annual PAACK show opens . . .

Friday, August 27th, 2021

En Plein Air
an exhibition of recent
work by the Plein Air
Artists of Central Kentucky

It’s been an exceptional season for making art outdoors, and our local Art Center of the Bluegrass is currently presenting many of the resulting creations. I have six collage miniatures on display as part of the show. Enjoy the exhibit in-person or browse the virtual gallery until 9/11.

One of the highlights of the spring was our gathering at the backyard of Lee and David Simpson, with its quiet explosion of white and pink dogwood trees. They were certainly calling attention to themselves here and all over Danville. What a perfect day to be outside with the PAACK and “painting with paper,” thanks to my mobile collage kit. After some initial work, I gradually became convinced the scene was taking shape. As location coordinator for the day, I’d gotten off to an awkward start. I eventually came away from the pleasurable day with a solid interim stage, but as I began to finish the trees in the studio, it was clear that the piece needed more than details to improve it. When I decided that the foreground was too deep, I impetuously peeled off the base and moved it up an inch or so — after all, this is collage. That one modification helped everything about the look. The rest of the process became obvious. If I reinforced the sun-activated colors and spent a bit more time with the fence area on the right side, I could declare it finished, as long as I stayed within an overall time allocation that was legitimately en plein air. I was pleased to achieve a 70%/30% solution.

Whenever I gather under the sky with traditional landscape painters, their impressive work challenges me to “do my thing” with paper. With each outing, it’s feeling more like I’m painting, too! This was true in May, when we spread out to interpret the country home site of Paula and Ken Scott. A particular view of their wrap-around porch and surrounding garden captured my eye. I wanted to combine some hard-edge cutting with my evolving “brushstroke” technique. As is often the case, I pushed the finishing touches back in the studio to the 50/50 limit, matching my location time with more detailed refinements indoors. I’m still trying to solve how to bring something closer to a level of interesting density while still outside. Perhaps I’ll find that, by necessity, a totally site-based collage needs to be simpler in expression and more decisive in composition. A milestone in June and the subsequent Paint the Town experience would drive home the point, and also emphasize the importance of having a supply of “prepared papers” on hand to boost speed and expand my available vocabulary of effects.

I like to work outside because I like to be outside. When I formerly thought of myself as an amateur triathlete, I’d cross-train right through the hottest days of the summer. It doesn’t bother me to extend an Art Out into the late afternoon. Sometimes the morning shade has long since abandoned me. If I’m well into the groove, I can barely notice. Before I get totally off the subject here, I should state that I actually rely on direct sunlight to promote the drying of my collage surface, since I’m usually working wet-on-wet. A good example of this was the day PAACK gathered in the nearby Forkland community. I don’t fault others for finding a shady spot to paint. I set up not far away in the open sun.

In the decades since this Ohioan adopted Central Kentucky as my permanent home, I’ve developed an affection for the distinct topography and knobby woodlands of our area. Sure, the famous horse farms and limestone palisades are always handy, but I’ll never get enough of the unique contours of a “gumdrop horizon.” The Forkland community, which straddles three adjacent counties, was a destination that fit my attachment to “The Knobs”. The result was On the North Rolling Fork, one of my favorite landscape miniatures of the year.

Dogwood Day
collage miniature by J A Dixon
70% / 30% — site to studio
8 x 7.75 inches

• S O L D

Country Porch
collage miniature by J A Dixon
50% / 50% — site to studio
7.75 x 7.75 inches

• S O L D

On the North Rolling Fork
collage miniature by J A Dixon
50% / 50% — site to studio
8 x 7.75 inches

• S O L D

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

Tillie’s unpainted facade

Tuesday, July 13th, 2021

“What happens if we like a piece of art or hate a piece of art? Nothing. The art is still the same; it hasn’t changed. If we can realize that our judgments are not the truth, but a way to keep from telling the truth, then we begin the process of discovering what our truth is and putting that on the page.”
— Fonda Clark Haight

I started this miniature in a friend’s yard three weeks ago and cut myself off in the studio yesterday when the indoor work equaled the time expended on location. I wanted to keep the ratio to 50%/50%, a standard limitation we use for our annual En Plein Air exhibition. I’m fond of this piece, even though it will always look unfinished to me. I could’ve continued to refine it with more texture and details, but I had to keep in mind that it was more about the process than an end result. I learned something that day at Tillie’s about responding with paper to what I observed before me, in preparation for the “Paint the Town” time crunch. There was too much character in that old garage to fully capture anyway. Our fellow PAACK member has left the rear of that particular structure unpainted and speckled with antique tools — all for the benefit of local artists. Not a big mystery for anyone who knows Tillie!

Weathered Backside
collage miniature by J A Dixon
50% / 50% — site to studio
7.75 x 7.75 inches
available for purchase

Posted in 1) Available!, En Plein Air, Exhibitions, J A Dixon, Landscape | No Comments »

Paint the town. (With paper!)

Saturday, July 3rd, 2021

“If everything seems under control, you’re just not going fast enough.”
— Mario Andretti

One week ago, I spent a windy Saturday in frantic competition with the clock, and managed to get an outdoor collage artwork framed and delivered for Lexington’s annual Paint the Town plein air event. At the opening reception that same evening, I was stunned to get a prompt sale and 2nd-place prize. It was one of the most exhilarating twelve hours I’ve experienced in quite a while.

Oh, the dubious lengths some of us will go to chase artistic intensity — even the temporary madness of extreme deadline pressure — all in the pursuit of rapt spontaneity. Heaven help me!

It doesn’t seem so long ago when I first took my collage obsession out of doors, and this kind of open challenge was a goal too absurd to contemplate. I had scouted the location and spent a couple days in preparation. By the time I’d registered a blank canvas, raced to my site and set up, one of the precious six hours had evaporated. I began to battle the breeze (nothing new there). Nor were the other 40 artists involved my foes. It was clear that the only towering opponent I faced was a daunting imperative to speed up my process. I’ve never pasted paper so fast in my life!

The judge said this about my piece: “I was very interested in the way this artist managed to create such an evocative landscape using collaged paper — and on a windy day! Places and buildings often hold so many memories and meanings, and the use of text on the siding of the buildings — with the words appearing in reverse, so they become texture and tone — adds another level of meaning.”

It’s gratifying, and profoundly reinforcing, to have a knowledgeable evaluator find significance in aspects that have evolved gradually to become a natural part of my plein air method. I appreciate her remarks, the organizing effort of all those with Arts Connect, the camaraderie of the participating artists, the buyers (Scott and Paul), the indispensable support of my dearest partner — and you, reader, for visiting here and for reading all of this!

Onward to the next challenge!

Off Upper
plein air collage on canvas by J A Dixon
12 x 12 inches + handmade frame

• Second Place Prize / S O L D

Posted in Collage, Constraints, D L Dixon, En Plein Air, Events, Exhibitions, Honors, Ingredients, J A Dixon, Landscape, Methodology, Technique | No Comments »

Renewal

Friday, June 18th, 2021

This artwork was created for and accepted into BEGINNINGS/ENDINGS, a virtual exhibition organized by Kate Savage at Arts Connect in Lexington, Kentucky. It began with musings on the cyclic lives of trees as a resource. Searching my stash for collage ingredients prompted what I consider a spontaneous work of abstraction as much as an interpretation of the exhibition theme.

Renewal
collage on canvas by J A Dixon
12 x 12 x 1.25 inches
available for purchase

Posted in 1) Available!, Abstraction, Collage, Exhibitions, Ingredients, J A Dixon, K Savage | No Comments »

New Birth, New Growth, New Beginnings

Friday, May 28th, 2021

“Younger than we are,
O children, and frailer,
Soon in the blue air they’ll be,
Singer and sailor.”

— Nest Eggs | A Child’s Garden of Verses,
Robert Louis Stevenson, 1900

Today is the final day of “New Birth, New Growth, New Beginnings,” a juried exhibition celebrating spring at Art Center of the Bluegrass. My accepted artwork originated from a satisfying blend of subject, medium, and poetic reference.

The green space that surrounds my home studio has been a haven for multiple generations of robins. A surreptitious, close-up glimpse of their familiar nest eggs was the visual idea that dislodged any others I might have used to interpret the theme. Spring is my favorite time of year, as it is for many, and perhaps the finished piece captures how my imagination is charged with anticipation for nature’s annual season of renewal. There is also something about the chaotic order of a bird’s nest that ideally lends itself to collage ingredients. I wanted to include the textural patterns of printed text, along with actual organic substance — in this case, the inner membranes of hard-neck garlic stalks from the previous year’s harvest. The “patina” of salvaged wallpaper from a nearby historical tear-down provided areas of desired subtlety. Relying on reclaimed tea-bag material has gradually become an integral part of my technique, but I hadn’t put it to use before with such a linear quality. For zones that would benefit from deeper shadow, I added walnut juice to my typical polymer sealant and “smoothed” the eggshells ever so slightly with colored pencil and a milky tint (giving rise to the final description of “combined mediums”).

Human civilization has increasingly peeled itself from the balanced interdependence of the natural world. More of us are doing our best as individuals to fix that torn relationship. There are different ways to promote a necessary restoration. It’s important to discover as many as possible. I find myself taking more advantage of bringing art to nature and nature to art. I am thankful that my life conditions grant me creative opportunities to experience this healing process.

Soon in the Blue Air They’ll Be
collage with combined mediums on structured panel
J A Dixon, 20 x 25 inches

• S O L D

Posted in Acrylic, Collage, Combined Mediums, Exhibitions, Ingredients, J A Dixon, Larger Works, Methodology, Pencil, Technique, Verse | No Comments »

Quarry

Monday, May 3rd, 2021

“Perpetual devotion to what a man calls his business is only to be sustained by perpetual neglect of many other things.”
— Robert Louis Stevenson

ROCK, PAPER, SCISSORS, the virtual exhibition organized by Kate Savage at Arts Connect, had its online event with artist commentary yesterday. As I prepared some remarks about my included artwork, I looked back to see what I’d written about it after its completion in 2019.

Nothing — that’s what I found.

With an emphasis on documenting my journey into making collage en plein air, I’ve apparently neglected to say as much about a corresponding investigation of studio-based landscape. Being a self-taught illustrator and fine artist, working from photographs has been a central part of the creative process — at least since my days as a “gopher” student in the 1970s, when I assisted veteran commercial artists compile reference scrap for tight-deadline assignments. In recent years, my work on location is informing how I do a collage painting indoors from a photo.

Quarry is a fitting example, created from a wonderful image by Jeff Hiles, an Ohio photographer who generously gave a green light to interpret his work in another medium. My piece also dovetails nicely with the theme of the show. More importantly, it demonstrates how I’m gradually learning to bring into the studio the sense of immediacy and intuitive spontaneity that I experience when working directly from a natural scene.

Quarry
collage landscape by J A Dixon
25 x 18.5 inches
on panel, framed
available for purchase

Posted in 1) Available!, Collage, En Plein Air, Exhibitions, J A Dixon, J Hiles, K Savage, Landscape, Larger Works | No Comments »

A Creative Synthesis Revealed

Friday, January 29th, 2021

“Improvising is the closest thing I do to meditation. I have to respond honestly to what’s happening in the music.”
— Michelle Dorrance

“Order is not enough. You can’t just be stable, and secure, and unchanging, because there are still vital and important new things to be learned. Nonetheless, chaos can be too much. You can’t long tolerate being swamped and overwhelmed beyond your capacity to cope while you are learning what you still need to know. Thus, you need to place one foot in what you have mastered and understood and the other in what you are currently exploring and mastering.”
— Jordan B Peterson

The year culminated in my largest collage artwork so far. I’m pleased to announce its acceptance as part of REVEAL, a new display of large-scale, two-dimensional pieces in the Kentucky Artisan Center at Berea. All of us might point to a milestone achievement. It can be the most effortless and the most challenging thing we’ve ever done, both at the same time.

Buried in a twelve-month cycle of worldwide catastrophe are countless stories to be told by artists who crossed the treacherous, often surreal territory of 2020. Perhaps they are less significant than what so many others endured, often within tragic circumstances, but creative people have had to face unprecedented disruptions like everyone. Restrictions under “lockdown” transformed many aspects of individual practices. I am very fortunate to have been able to continue working in the same isolated way characteristic of my long tenure from a home-based studio. Our regional plein air group managed to stay active. Artistic cross pollination flourished online. Opportunities for me to show art remained intact — all because many persevered to organize exhibitions that might have been conveniently postponed or canceled. Each person on that list overcame hurdles to make things happen, and to develop virtual adjuncts that held risks to a minimum. Amid the frustrating chaos, there are many things for which to be thankful.

As I’ve described here before, my experimental miniatures have been the basis for larger works on canvas. Decades of design decisions and influences enable my work to be intuitive in process. In late 2020, I challenged myself to take what I’ve discovered with explorations at a smaller scale and to formalize it as a merger of design structure and pure spontaneity. Within a large format, I can focus on a counterbalance of both. Synthesis is an example of this fusion.

For me, collage abstraction is about the creative tension between order and chaos, comparable to how a soloist elaborates extemporaneously on a written melody. The characteristics of the paper ingredients — color, value, shape, line, texture — serve as the notes, rests, and rhythms of the composition. Thumbnail studies represent the evolution of a “manuscript,” analogous to musical notation, which then allows for an improvisational “performance.” But unlike a live concert, the visual artist can choose to return to a spontaneous expression and make deliberate refinements before declaring a piece “finished.” If so, it becomes similar to layering or enhancing tracks in a recording studio as the last step in a process. My bringing a large artwork to completion in this manner stands in contrast to the making of collage miniatures. There is a strong connection between the two rituals that I shall continue to explore.

Synthesis
collage on canvas by J A Dixon
48 x 36 inches
available to collectors

Posted in 1) Available!, Abstraction, Collage, Embedded Miniatures, Exhibitions, J A Dixon, Larger Works, Methodology, Music, Thumbnails | No Comments »

Best in Show: Sycamore Reach

Monday, January 11th, 2021

The sun was setting. Late November light penetrated the very top of a tall sycamore. It looked as if the tree was reaching up into the deep blue sky of autumn to capture the final rays.

The email notice stunned me for a moment. Sycamore Reach, my latest example of “painting nature with paper,” had been chosen for a top local prize. I knew I’d worked at the pinnacle of my abilities, and my fingers were crossed that it might be well received, but it was an unexpected thrill nonetheless. My surprise soon gave way to satisfaction, and I was left with the fullness of gratitude — a good place to be left.

Paint by Nature: Trees was a stimulating opportunity to bring into the studio everything that I learned from another season of plein-air outings. Using photos I took with a smartphone, my subject would be a grand American Sycamore that inhabits the median of Lafayete Parkway in Lexington. I’d looked at a few arboreal candidates during my research trip to the city, including a majestic Chinkapin Oak. There wasn’t much direct illumination left when I got to the sycamore, my last destination. The lighting turned out to be ideal for a reference image.

It’s a privilege to dedicate my creative effort to promoting the important role of trees and the priorities of Live Green Lexington. My appreciation to Jeanette Tesmer, Alice Hilton, plus everyone who helped organize this nature-inspired arts event — and especially to show judge Leah Castleman, an art educator, avid painter, and outdoors enthusiast.

The exhibition is located in the upstairs community gallery of the Pam Miller Downtown Arts Center through Friday, February 26, but the center is closed “until further notice due to red zone status of COVID-19.” You’re invited to take a Virtual Tour of the show, and think of me when you vote for People’s Choice!

Sycamore Reach
mixed media collage by J A Dixon
8 x 10.75 inches

• Best in Show / People’s Choice / S O L D

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

Haven on the Ridge

Wednesday, September 30th, 2020

“Observers should feel that the act of painting was effortless — that it happened, it just happened. Which, of course, is not true.”
— Jane Piper

I’ll be spending more time in the collage studio soon, but I made the most of the warm months to create collage artwork in the open air. Much love and appreciation goes out to my sister, Joan Wood, for hosting a summer plein-air gathering at her wonderful retreat on Kelley Ridge in Garrard County, Kentucky. Since I was the PAACK coordinator for the outing, I decided to set up in a central spot to help me avoid overlooking any of our intrepid participants. The turnout was great, and I had at least one visitor that I wasn’t expecting. A house portrait demands a certain density and exactitude. I left with a good start, but it fell short of the hoped-for level of detail, so I challenged myself to bring it around with an expenditure of studio time equal to what I devoted to the outdoor session.

Cardinal Haven is the name that our mother, Virginia, came up with for Joan’s isolated abode (which spurred the title of this featured miniature). It’s on display right now, as part of the annual group exhibition in downtown Danville. En Plein Air lasts until October 30.

Haven on the Ridge
collage miniature by J A Dixon
50% / 50% — site to studio
7.1875 x 7.1875 inches
private collection

Posted in En Plein Air, Exhibitions, Gift Art, J A Dixon, Landscape, V E Dixon | No Comments »

I finally help to “paint the town” of Lexington!

Friday, July 17th, 2020

Paint the Town is an annual plein-air-oriented landscape exhibition in Lexington, Kentucky. The parameters of the traditional twelve-hour event are strict, and I’ve always had the notion of it as a flat-out competition — sort of a bass tournament for artists, if I may indulge a silly exaggeration.

With the current societal restrictions having caused so many art shows to be postponed or cancelled, it’s a distinct credit to ARTSconnect that a way was found to make the event happen at all in 2020. The Pam Miller Downtown Arts Center reopened to host the exhibition. Many of the more stringent guidelines (and, sadly, all the hospitality enhancements) were stripped out of this year’s version.

I’m willing to admit that the relaxed standards were enough to convince me to take part, not having participated in this kind of gig before. I was eager to gather what I’ve learned from my plein-air experience and “paint with paper” in the studio. The goal was to fuse the spontaneity of working outdoors with a more deliberate process that I’ve explored by using photo references to create a larger landscape on panel. I can’t be more pleased with the results. I continue to incorporate white tissue for desired cloud effects, and I’ve come to rely on reclaimed teabag material as a beneficial adjunct to colored papers. I work at not overdoing tinted sealants, but the added depth is worth a cautious, mixed-media enhancement (especially when I mix acrylic gel medium with a rare portion of walnut juice from Richard Taylor).

Please take a Virtual Tour of the show. My 90-second sound bite is included, or you can listen to the audio by clicking here. Of course, there’s a YouTube video of all the artwork, too. My two collage miniatures enjoy some great company, and it pleases me to point out that juror Bruce Neville designated Byway Corner with an Honorable Mention. Current gallery hours at the Pam Miller Downtown Arts Center are Wed/Thurs/Friday, noon to 5pm. The show lasts until August 3, 2020.

Byway Corner
collage landscape by J A Dixon
7 x 7.125 inches
available for purchase

• Honorable Mention

Along Market
collage landscape by J A Dixon
7 x 7.125 inches
available for purchase

Posted in 1) Available!, B Neville, Collage, Constraints, Events, Exhibitions, Honors, J A Dixon, Landscape, Links, R Taylor | No Comments »

Notorious ‘Collage a Tois’ convenes @ NYNA 2020

Monday, January 6th, 2020

Dixon joins fellow collage artists Brandon Long and Robert Hugh Hunt
at another New Year New Art reception in Danville, Kentucky.

Well, folks, I was about to start bragging again on the January event known in the Bluegrass as New Year New Art. Having extolled the indispensable exhibition many times at this site, I’d better refrain and just let some of the artwork speak for itself. After the opening reception, I paid a return visit to view the show at my own pace and to capture a few square crops of my favorite works.

While we’re at it, here’s nine more details from the 2019 show. It’s always an honor to share the spotlight with some extraordinary regional artists, so I hope the tradition of NYNA endures a very long time!