Graphic Attitude Series
Striking out in a new direction can be intimidating. My trick was to paint in series of three, 15” x 25”, each then divided into 5” x 5” squares. The first few paintings were total duds, but there was something interesting starting to happen in the three paintings which were restricted to black, white, red, and two grays. I was not happy with any of the three paintings, but was excited by portions. After having them scanned I played with them in photoshop, turning them into a series of prints, Graphic Attitude: Bold, shortly before Covid hit.
Graphic Attitude #3
Under Covid lockdown nice mornings were spent with tea and a good book on the front porch. The first book on my wish list was 9th Street Women and it was everything I had hoped: a review of the entire abstract expressionist movement; a view into the tangled relationships between artists and the art world; and insight into how these artists were or were not able to pivot when the work went stale or the world changed around them. I was energized by Lee Krasner’s collages of the mid-late 40’s, and since the Lockdown had me a bit blocked creatively, decided to try my hand.
The first collage was created by cutting the original Graphic Bold paintings into squares and rearranging them, like putting a puzzle together with no instructions and no right answer. Exciting things began to happen before my eyes – relationships I would never have discovered any other way – a multidimensionality that was greater than the sum of the parts. The activity itself was both psychically engaging and emotionally calming during a stressful time, a productive way to hang on to my sanity. The first collage was Boldly Graphic #1. The leftover pieces were used to create #2 and there were not enough bits and pieces left to make a greeting card, which felt perfect.
I did not create Graphic Boldness #1 until 2022, when I cut up multiple artist’s proofs from each of
the Graphic Attitude: Bold series.
Graphic Nature Series
The Graphic Nature series came to me as a dream of stylized nature forms in a distinct color palette, which I tried to capture in sketches and notes. Again, I was unhappy with the overall originals, but liked parts and had them scanned before cutting them up and creating the collage Naturally Graphic.
I was struggling with the three compositions in Photoshop just as Covid hit- and did not revisit the Graphic Nature series until Spring 2021. Never satisfied with the photo-shopped versions, they won’t be published as prints, but I loved the colors and have used several artist’s proofs as fodder for collages, creating the Graphically Natural Series.
That always seems to happen when I have a dream about artwork which I then try to recreate in reality. Those paintings never capture the magic of the dream art, but the struggle always leads to important discoveries.
Graphic Joy Series
Love the joyful Caribbean colors of this series. The original three paintings were begun pre-covid and finished a year later. Again, I did not like the originals as stand-alone paintings, but at this point that no longer mattered. I happily cut them to pieces, without even scanning. Ironically, it was the last series begun before Covid and the Collage was the last collage done before my brother died, and the joy went out of life for a while. That was a bad year, 2021 with many losses, much grief. I hope to revisit this series to create prints.
I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn’t say any other way,
things I had no words for. – Georgia O’Keeffe
Graphic Industry Series
The three originals for this series were not laid out on a grid. Again, I loved parts of the three but not the whole compositions. No scans were made of these originals, but I cut off the bits I liked the best and cut the rest into squares to create a collage titled Industriously Graphic (not shown). That collage was then scanned and developed as this limited-edition print, Graphic Industry.
The unusable artist’s proofs and failed prints were cut up for collages, resulting in Graphic Industry #1 and #2.
The Graphic Series which have consumed me through the Covid years reflect the world around us. Globalization and the Internet are fracturing nations and transforming our world. My collages show how this sort of transformation can create something entirely unexpected, exciting, complex and beautiful.