Here is a glimpse at some of the finishing touches to Bygone Source. For a plein air designation, my concluding studio refinements do not exceed the amount of time I have spent on location to capture a landscape impression with paper.
Archive for the ‘Landscape’ Category
Finishing Touches
Friday, September 1st, 2023Gallery of Collage Landscapes
Wednesday, March 8th, 2023
Thanks for your interest in my collage landscapes. Click on each thumbnail to view a larger image. Click here to scroll the original blog posts.
View the LITTER-ALLY KENTUCKY collection, too!
‘Outside/Inside’ is where it’s at!
Monday, January 30th, 2023“If I could say it in words there would be no reason to paint.”
– Edward Hopper
“Painting in papers” is my passion as I work in the studio to finish a season of outside starts while dreaming of springtime. There are many varieties of collage rooted in the history of art and craft. I do get lost in this particular one!
a boulder of sweetness, a boulder of sorrow . . .
Thursday, December 29th, 2022“Tension between the best things that can happen and the worst things that can happen is where you and I find ourselves every day. That’s where you’ll find Jesus. Over and over again, he’s in that place between sweetness and sorrow — fruitfulness and barrenness.”
— Troy Brewer
Not too many people in the world receive a miniature collage landscape as a thank-you present for the holidays. I’m so grateful for this year-end commission. What a splendid gift — from my dear patron and for her recipient, too! Family loss, family gain. Funny how sweetness and sorrow get all blended together at this closing time of year.
Les Rochers du Long Lac
collage landscape by J A Dixon
6.5 x 6.8125 inches
0:100 site/studio
private collection
“LITTER-ALLY KENTUCKY” takes shape . . .
Friday, September 30th, 2022“The thing is to be attentively present. To sit and wait is as important as to move. Patience is as valuable as industry. What is to be known is always there. When it reveals itself to you, or when you come upon it, it is by chance. The only condition is your being there and being watchful.”
— Wendell Berry
At the close of 2021, based on my plein-air practice to date, I applied to the Kentucky Arts Council and received a KAR grant with funding from the National Endowment for the Arts. The goal of my project is an exhibition-worthy body of collage landscapes created from salvaged ingredients consisting of litter, trash, and recycled papers. The new works are en plein air interpretations of actual rural spots in Central Kentucky. The collection will be made available to partnering venues as a thematic exhibition that carries a call for greater awareness of how we interact with our environment. The traveling display will invite community engagement in the form of gallery talks, student opportunities, and online references — with a message for greater litter awareness and a cleaner countryside in the Commonwealth.
To fulfill this grant-supported process, I am nearing the end of my creation phase. It’s been a period of acquiring paper litter, arranging visits to rural locations, engaging with property owners who accommodate my on-site sessions, starting the landscapes outside, and making follow-up studio refinements. Collage artworks will have been made at over a dozen locations in six contiguous Central Kentucky counties around Danville. I avoid exceeding my outside time when completing a landscape indoors, to stay within a 50:50 ratio. 
There are techniques for details that are best left to the end, when the breeze is not a factor, but my goal is to retain the fresh, intuitive quality of the initial impression.
It often seems like I’m behind schedule, until I remind myself that the entire process is not unlike the act of being present in nature. The way forward can be revealed as much by receptivity as by forced progression. I’ll spend the balance of the year with finishing touches, having the artwork professionally framed, preparing support materials and promotions for my sought-after series of shows, plus contacting venues suitable for the traveling display (which will be chosen in part based on the anticipated reach and exposure for optimum audiences, including youngsters).
An important part of this project has been my desire to interact with the public about a relatively recent area of concentration for me as an artist — representational collage. Until they observe more closely, many people think my landscapes are traditional paintings. It’s been rewarding to watch this sense of discovery, so similar to what I experience as I explore the potential of art made from paper. This connection with others fired my enthusiasm and prompted me to propose a way to engage audiences with another layer of meaning. By including a higher percentage of litter and trash, I hope to further a conversation about the ongoing problem of litter in Kentucky and the solid waste crisis in general. As I exhibit “painted” rural scenes that were created with by-products of our wasteful society, I’m optimistic that my art will promote a more conscious regard for stewardship of natural places.
Near Catnip Hill
collage en plein air by J A Dixon
50% / 50% — site to studio
8.375 x 8.625 inches, 2022
Her Back Door
Wednesday, September 14th, 2022“Don’t come a-knockin’ around my door
Don’t wanna see your shadow no more
Coloured lights can hypnotize
Sparkle someone else’s eyes.”
— B L Cummings
Here’s a recent plein air collage of mine that’s on display in the conference center exhibition presented by the Arts Commission of Danville / Boyle County at Constitution Square. I consider this in the category of “miniature house portraits,” which would pose challenges in any medium. Working with paper (particularly when outside) makes for a tricky process of interpreting proper perspective. It’s been suggested that I didn’t nail the vanishing points with this one, even though I completed most of the architectural treatments in the studio.
Harlan Hubbard thought that, “a painting, to be good, must be done with dash and abandonment, even one which has meticulous detail. If one niggles over it, the result is dull and lifeless.” It’s a danger for any artist to “niggle” or “noodle” at the expense of the overall expression. I haven’t convinced myself that it didn’t happen with this one, even though a plein air painter that I admire thinks otherwise. It has something to do with my intentionally introducing a contrast of crisp detail and soft ambiguity — with a debatable degree of success. I guess that the “eye of the beholder” has to take it from here. Without a doubt, I haven’t confronted this difficulty for the last time.
Her Back Door
collage en plein air by J A Dixon
7.125 x 9 inches
50:50 site/studio
available for purchase
Our “En Plein Air” show in Danville
Monday, August 22nd, 2022“And yet, standing at his appointed place, the trunk of the tree, he does nothing other than gather and pass on what comes to him from the depths. He neither serves nor rules — he transmits. His position is humble. And the beauty at the crown is not his own. He is merely a channel.”
— Paul Klee
Another anticipated En Plein Air annual exhibition has appeared and vanished, my sixth consecutive participation since I took up the challenge of “painting in papers” with the PAACK. My sincere thanks to Art Center of the Bluegrass for continuing to support our regional group!
The two miniatures that I included in the show are featured here. Completing both of them in the studio raised some concerns that I’d be able to retain my on-site impression as I made detailed additions too delicate for outdoor work. Did I manage to do it?
East End Survivor
collage miniature by J A Dixon
6 x 7.125 inches, framed 11 x 14
available for purchase
Gardener’s Nook
collage miniature by J A Dixon
6.25 x 7.25 inches, framed 11 x 14
available for purchase
Eleventh chapter — Paint old Lex in papers . . .
Saturday, July 2nd, 2022“If I could say it in words, there would be no reason to paint.”
– Edward Hopper
Here’s my collage en plein air for this summer’s annual “Paint the Town” challenge (organized by Kate Savage of Lexington’s Arts Connect). Hours never evaporate so alarmingly fast as during this event. It had to be delivered framed and ready for immediate display within the six-hour deadline. The piece looks a bit unfinished to my eye, and probably will until an image wrapped in expectations has faded from my head. My insane trackside rig (located across from the Lawrence Brewer & Son Horse Oats warehouse) drew the attention of a railroad inspector, but, thankfully, I was left uninterrupted.
Do you think I should’ve brought along the kitchen sink, too?
Oathouse
collage en plein air by J A Dixon
100% / 0% — site to studio
10 x 10 inches + handcrafted frame
available for purchase
A satisfying momentum . . .
Wednesday, June 15th, 2022I’ve been out on location, painting in papers — to build a new series of collage landscapes that I shall talk more about soon!
PAACK kicks off 2022 season!
Thursday, April 14th, 2022
I really enjoyed PAACK’s chilly kickoff outing at the home of Mrs. Penn. As everyone began to focus on her exploding flower beds, I turned my attention in the other direction (for some odd reason). I couldn’t deny an interest in her staging nook near a teal fence (in the same way I was captivated by the back of Tillie’s garage last year). I’m completing the collage I started that day, and it will be a challenge to finish it for our summer show within the 50:50 limitation. I wouldn’t mind interpreting the gardening table, but I’ll need to omit that element to pull this off. I’d rather “move” the nearby bird feeder into my composition for a splash of complementary color, and also to find some way, within the remaining time, to “paint” the hay bales with paper ingredients.
Do I have to count the minutes I spend staring at my reference photo?
My 50:50 time constraint will necessitate simplification,
but inserting the colorful bird feeder is a given!
Tenth chapter — Painting from nature with paper . . .
Saturday, February 19th, 2022“Follow the ways of natural creation, the becoming, the functioning of forms, then perhaps starting from nature you will achieve formations of your own, and one day you may even become like nature yourself and start creating.”
— Paul Klee
As I pushed toward the hanging date for CHANGE OF SEEN last month, I pulled out an unfinished work. In 2020 it had been my hope to complete it as part of the Paint By Nature entry — an interpretation of an urban oak tree. Everything was done except for the tree itself, which I’d wanted to paste together in a burst of spontaneity. The “start” went into cold storage when I ran out of time for two submissions. Fast forward to January 2022. Now I had the ideal scenario. My tight deadline would not allow me to indulge any slowdown or second guess. Positive, unanticipated things often happen when I occasionally challenge myself to work under a severe constraint. The hesitant, rational mind is sidelined in favor of an intuitive response that is rooted in everything one has ever created. This can be the case with music, writing, or nearly any artistic format, but the phenomenon especially lends itself to painting.
Interestingly, I’ve always preferred watercolors to other paint mediums because of its unpredictability and the “happy accidents” that occur. I admire oils greatly, but they hold no attraction for me as I approach my 70s. I hadn’t expected to discover that “painting in papers” could captivate me so and knit a reverence for nature into my art. 
One of the primary appeals of collage is total flexibility. It’s almost impossible to make a blunder, if one stays “in the zone” without letting the intellect gain an upper hand. When others use words such as exacting or meticulous to describe what I do, it usually throws me, because I consider my approach as more instinctive. And yet, there is no denying the presence of “artisanship.” With any task at hand, craft is essential. It was drilled into me with rigor after I chose the path of applied design. (That the young are asked to dedicate themselves to a particular discipline and to ignore countless alternatives is a weird fact of life. Many of us spend decades unraveling it.) So, a certain precision is fused into my method, even when I’m racing the clock. One man’s chaos is another man’s perfectionism.
I’ve lived my adult life trying to spin creative gold in a studio of one sort or another. A supremacy of the natural world in my youth had been set aside as part of an itinerary toward the graphic arts profession. Reflecting on a long journey that leads to the ever-rolling “now,” I recognize that nature was always calling. It influenced my leaving big cities for a smaller community. It provided a firm foundation for my diet and a health-oriented lifestyle. It was an unfailing source for well-being when conditions seemed out of balance. Even so, an unsatisfied need remained elusive until I finally took paper and paste outdoors, where the potential for inspiration was out of arm’s reach. That I could respond with collage, and find it so rewarding, is something I hadn’t foreseen.
If you want to start with the first chapter, you can find that story here. It’s been almost five years of direct observation, and I’m itching to begin a new season of working en plein air. The broader point I’d like to make is how the experience also has invigorated the way I approach representational collage in the studio. It feels like it’s all been funneled into an evolving intuition. Working outside has transformed how I make visual decisions even when using photographic reference under pressure, as I did with Grand Chinkapin. After quickly preparing piles of printed scrap that seemed appropriate for tree foliage, I was able to explode those ingredients into place with a minimum of conscious thought — not unlike I try to do every time I take my collage kit on location. “Painting from nature with paper” has become a more integrated practice, inside or outside. Change of Seen shares this adventure with others.
Grand Chinkapin
collage with combined mediums by J A Dixon
0% / 100% — site to studio
11 x 7.75 inches + shadow-box frame
available for purchase