“Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after.”
– Henry David Thoreau
Another trip collage from my recent “fishing retreat” to the Les Cheneaux Islands of Lake Huron. Working within the constraint of limited scrap at hand is a worthwhile visual exercise in preparation for creating collage artworks at any scale.
Untitled (For Your Protection)
journal experiment by J A Dixon
6 x 6 inches
“The absence of limitations is the enemy of art.”
– Orson Welles
Here is another journal experiment based on ingredient constraints. It has a more abstract emphasis, in contrast to the previous example. There are numerous ways to impose this instructive limitation. Some collage artists have been known to create a composition restricted to the random scraps found on their work surface. Others make it into collaborative play, swapping an envelope of ingredients within which to work. A speed requirement will reveal more aspects of creative decision making and give rise to other insights. Paradoxically, there is no limit to how limitations can unlock the freedom of artistic expression.
results of a “trip collage” exercise
journal experiment by J A Dixon
7.25 x 5.25 inches
“It is the limitation of means that determines style, gives rise to new forms and makes creativity possible.”
– Georges Braque
From the first decision an artist makes when confronting a blank format, available options are eliminated. As contradictory as it may sound, writers, designers, musicians, dancers, visual artists — all of us find fertile ground in restriction. Working within limitations, self-imposed or otherwise, is always at the heart of the creative process. One of my preferred journal experiments is a variation I call the “trip collage.” Mind you, this has absolutely nothing to do with psychotropic escapades. However, I do periodically “expand my consciousness” of the medium with an exercise based on limited ingredients. When on holiday or outside the studio, I produce a small collage only with the elements immediately available at hand. Litter, junk mail, discarded packaging, or the detritus of a particular environment will become the instruments of a miniature orchestration. Even within this constraint, choices about what to use and what to ignore will govern the approach, and the interesting relationship between spontaneity and intuitive judgment can be observed.
results of a “trip collage” exercise
journal experiment by J A Dixon
5.5 x 6.75 inches
“Life is trying things to see if they work.”
– Ray Bradbury
A familiar approach to collage makes use of elements positioned on a field, activating the “white space” with a typical figure/ground relationship. Often the working substrate is carefully selected for inherent visual interest or aesthetic qualities. Like a visage with character, a single piece of “ancient” stock can speak volumes on its own. There are many other ways for “negative space” to play a key part in collage artwork. For me, experimenting with small studies in my journal can suggest a different twist, with the potential for exploitation in a more finished composition.
Untitled (IRA)
journal experiment by J A Dixon
4.375 x 4.25 inches
Untitled (Equal)
collage experiment by J A Dixon
9.5 x 8.25 inches
“I am a great believer in the primacy of drawing as a means of engaging the world and understanding what you’re looking at.”
– Milton Glaser
“Why do you make collage artwork when you can draw?” People who broach the subject rarely come at it quite so directly, but even if they did, the question would not be any easier to answer. To begin with, I do indeed draw, and have since the dawn of memory, and I bring that ability to my work as an illustrator, portrait artist, watercolorist, and wood engraver. My enthusiasm for collage is rooted in something else — an impulse not entirely clear to me. I am grateful for all my talents, but I was educated and trained as a designer, and the practice has done more than enable me to create a life as an independent creative professional. It has become embedded in my consciousness. Decades of visual decisions have informed my responsive intuition. Collage is part design experimentation, part painterly expression, part artisanship, and part meditation. It is always a probing beyond expectations, an exploration of potentials, a harnessing of associations in flux. It can be the result of self assignment, but the most exciting effects often grow out of ritual. For me, it is never disconnected from what is taking form in my current journal. Not true artist’s sketchbooks (much as I have always hope they would evolve toward), they inevitably become a record of verbal and visual thoughts or non-thoughts. Some of my journal experiments combine techniques and mediums in ways that have not yet found manifestation outside their covers. Perhaps some day the question will be: “Why do you also draw in your collage artwork?”
Untitled (necklace)
journal experiment by J A Dixon
9.5 x 6.25 inches
“Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.”
— Cesar A Cruz
The poet and activist surely was talking about something more significant than a collage collaboration, but his words apply. I can be the object of my own ease and distress when it comes to this sort of thing. Collaborations can be fulfilling when a meeting of minds is achieved, but they should be approached as experimental stretches. Safety has no place when solving these equations. Thanks, Allan, for another round of soothing discomfort!
Untitled (breech bloom)
a collage miniature collaboration by J A Dixon and A Bealy
(start by Bealy, finish by Dixon)
5 x 7 inches, collection of J A Dixon
Untitled (spare keys)
a collage miniature collaboration by J A Dixon and A Bealy
(start by Bealy, finish by Dixon)
5 x 7 inches, collection of A Bealy
a pair of journal studies
collage experiments by J A Dixon
4.25 x 4.25 inches each
Untitled (thoughtform)
collage experiment by J A Dixon
“When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.”
— Mark Twain“Take what you can,
All you can carry.
Take what you can,
And leave your thoughts behind.”
— Tom Petty“If everything you do must be measured against the good opinion of everyone else, what happens to your good opinion of yourself?”
— Wayne W Dyer
Hmmm . . . just realized that my line-up of quotations above might seem odd to some of you. At any rate, they capture a bit of what is on my mind, as I begin to reflect on a couple years of remarks about collage at this blogsite.
Like many others, I spend prayerful time caring for a parent with progressive dementia. The other day I was trying to explain to my mother, in terms she could appreciate, my burning desire to make collage artwork, and, touching on her prevailing sense of confusion, talked about my creative activity as a way to bring some kind of harmony out of the chaotic stream of disorder that dominates so much of current stimuli in our daily lives. It brought to my awareness the motivation at the center of what I love to do, but also fell short of the clarity for which I was reaching. Over the next year, I hope to find better words which get to the heart of that idea — how I take what I can carry into a process that leaves thinking behind, a kind of sweet madness that offers explanations difficult for me to achieve any other way. Of course, this is not the only approach to the medium. I hope to profile more collage artists who use a different methodology than my own — the extraordinary minimalists, the dedicated aestheticians, and those who continue to harness a kind of thoughtful irrationality that keeps me in awe.
I just looked over my previous comments after a full year of blogging, and, as a result, I feel the need to temper my ambitions going into year three, but that is not my nature. There are too many interesting things to explore in the dynamic world of contemporary collage. One of them is the continued explosion of collaboration. Another is the influence of social networks. Nearly every day I see an artist defeat the purpose of the platform with overexposure, failing to keep the age-old quality-vs-quantity issue in balance. One of my goals for the coming year is to take a closer look at how the ease of internet sharing affects the challenge of striking an equilibrium between the imperative to follow one’s passion without regard for opinion and the practical aspects of seeking recognition and approval from others. As most of you already know, it is not an easy task to walk that tightrope.
And one more thing, dear visitor. Please let me know what I can do to make this site more interactive as a unique forum for discussion. Meanwhile, you can count on me to observe, write, and make more art. Stop back again!
Untitled (flutter)
collage experiment by J A Dixon
9 x 11 inches
not for sale
Untitled (Speak No Evil)
collage experiment by J A Dixon
7.5 x 11.5 inches