“Individualism is rather like innocence; there must be something unconscious about it.”
— Louis Kronenberger
I often look back on the image of a personal miniature, long released into the intended realm of a friend, and I have no recollection of the process it underwent, but only a strong sense of the personality who inspired it. This is how it should be. I tend to be dubious of any artworks which retain too much of my methodology in their finished state. Calculation and contrivance are somehow out of place in a collage, but, of course, there are glorious exceptions to every rule. This also is how it should be.
Untitled (for Irina)
collage miniature by J A Dixon
estate of Irina Ilina
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.
