Collages

         Since 2007, I have been creating collages, ranging in size from 7.5 inches x 9.5 inches to a little under 14 x 17 inches.        I love creating these smaller works; to me, they're like poems or musical etudes. Such small compositions "force" me to "say" what I want to "say" in a succinct manner.  That doesn't mean that these pieces don't get complex and layered to the point of being "baroque," but they are meant to be small, something that draws the viewer in, asking him or her to enter a sometimes microcosmic rather than macrocosmic world.             Media used include crayons, colored pencils, ink, metallic pens, charcoal, graphite pencils, and watercolor pencils.  Papers include Bristol Board, heavy stock drawing paper, water color paper, and/or tracing paper.          There are two on-going sources of inspiration for these collages.  One is music, the other is my great love of the natural sciences.  The forms/structures and myriad colors that I find in my study of geology and astronomy are particularly influential.  Each piece should be seen as a kind of improvisation in which a specific vocabulary of images, shapes, colors, and techniques gets "played with."

NB: Because these are collages often comprised of multiple overlapping layers of paper, a 2D image will not capture the "depth" or the subtle "shadowing" that occurs in the actual work of art.