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!
“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!
“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
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.
“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
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
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
My solo show of collage landscapes stays on the road — this time at the Paul Sawyier Public Library in Frankfort. The exhibition lasts through September 23, and I am present for a gallery talk on August 20 at 6pm.
Maybeland
collage artwork by J A Dixon
11.875 x 8.875 inches
available to collectors
“The spirit laughs at man’s concern with the form of Art, with new expression because the old is outworn! It is man’s own poverty of vision yielding him nothing, so that to save himself he must trick out in new garb the old, old commonplaces, or exalt to be material for art the hitherto discarded trivialities of the mind.”
— Rockwell Kent
I guess it was only a matter of time before I represented in papers the Kentucky icon of our vanishing small farm economy. It took me longer than usual to pick a spot to sit and paste papers during my visit to Daycrest Farm. With the help of Jason, one of the hospitable owners, I found a scene at the back of the acreage. I didn’t know what I was looking for, and I had to shake off the impulse to make another try at summer blossoms in the commercial flower gardens near the highway. I listened to myself thinking, “Haven’t you done this kind of view before? What do you expect to discover?”
The PAACK “Art Out” turned out to be beneficial for me because I approached what appeared to be an “already done that” rural setting with everything I’ve learned about “painting in papers.” After an insane timetable during the recent plein air challenge in Lexington, it was nice to tear and glue at my typical snail’s pace. Amusingly, the tobacco barn seems to levitate in my first interim image. Although content with the day’s work, there were too many spots that needed attention, so I couldn’t declare the collage finished when back in the studio. Minute subtleties like barn ventilators, fence posts, and complex foliage details are difficult ingredients to manage outdoors with even the mildest of breezes (which are most welcome when highs are in the mid 90s).
My love for books prohibits me from destroying useful ones for art. I only cannibalize ruined ones. I typically ignore the literal language and include it for pattern and texture, but in this piece I became a bit attached to what the fragments of sentences actually said. It’s interesting to probe the effect of linguistic connotations, whether or not the meaning can be discerned. My inclusion of “manipulated” verbal content has become so complicated that it’s hard to explain, even in a workshop context. At any rate, I like to remind viewers that it is, after all, a collage.
I am rather pleased with this landscape, and I hope it lands with a person who wants to live with it!
Tobacco Crest
collage en plein air by J A Dixon
12 x 9 inches + wood frame, crafted by the artist
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