The Language of Shape

Because collage is one of my most frequently used techniques, I think a lot about shapes. A shape does not have to have hard edges, but collage is a great technique for creating very clear, well-defined edges. I love love love imagery created in cut paper collage. Clover Robin, for example, can make anything in cut paper. Her illustrations are just yummy. Julie Hamilton is another of my favorites, working in cut paper and paint.

Here are a few of my own images that use shape a the primary visual language:

I made these two, both 10″x10″, in 2013, part of a long series of “Shapes” pieces. You can see some of them on page 21 of my Fine Art America profile.

These two are both titled “Submerge”. They are 20″x20″ on wood panel from 2015. You can see the rest of the collection on Fine Art America, page 20.

These two small collages, 8″x8″, are in my book, Abstract Painting: The Elements of Visual Language. They are examples of shapes that are different in scale from each other.

Each of these is 9″x12″, “Stone Stacks”, which I made for my SkillShare class, Abstract Collage.

The five above are shape studies from 2021, varying from 8″‘x8″ to 6″x6″.

Enough about my history with shapes. I keep a Pinterest Board that I call “Cut Paper Collage”. It includes more than just cut paper collage. Many of the pieces include drawing and painting as well, but they all have some element of collage. I refer to it often for inspiration. Collage is such an accessible medium, and I am always amazed at the range of expression that is possible just with shapes cut out of paper and arranged on a surface.

Here are the results of a few recent musings.

Sometimes it’s fun to just play with shapes and see what they do, what they can express, what they can represent and how. Cut paper, whether collaged or not, is easy and fun and requires nothing but a pair of scissors and your stash. Thanks for visiting!

Tissue Paper Collage

Isn’t this something we did in elementary school? Well now there is tissue paper collage for grown-ups, with stained tissue paper that you create yourself, with high quality acrylic paints. You can make the colors as intense or as muted as you want, and they won’t fade or bleed like store bought tissue paper.

I am offering a short, cheap ($40), beginner-friendly workshop on Zoom:

Friday, June 14, 4:00 – 5:30 pm, Eastern Daylight Time.

Find workshop details here. Everyone who signs up will get the recording, so if you can’t make it at that time, don’t worry. You will still get all of the content.

A Sketchbook Practice

My new online class, The World is Your Sketchbook, concluded a couple of weeks ago, and I am still reeling from the experience of working with so many creative, thoughtful, inventive artists over the course of ten weeks. Here is a teeny tiny sampling of work made by the participants. Click on each image to see it larger.

These studies are in response to specific prompts, but you don’t have to know to prompt to appreciate them on their own merits. Some participants used an actual sketchbook, while others chose to work on loose sheets of paper. They are all ‘sketches’ or ‘studies’.

I will be offering The World Is Your Sketchbook again next year; I will let you know when I post it. Meanwhile, I’d love to know if you have a practice of sketching – making studies, making marks, trying out new things, without the intention of making them into finished works. What IS a study to you?

Rebuilding from the Fragments

Crossing My Wires No. 43

Existential Crisis No. 63.5

Creating new art pieces from the remains of previously enjoyed paintings and collages has been a prevalent theme in my work for the last couple of years. Re-building, re-inventing, re-configuring helps me sustain hope in a world that can feel overwhelmingly chaotic. Or at least it helps me feel hopeful in a studio that is chaotic, which has more to do with my lack of organizational skills than the current state of the world.

Crossing My Wires No. 73.6, collage and assemblage on paper

Still, I feel quite metaphorically correct, and in sync with the divisive politics, the planet in peril, and the heartbreaking conflicts that backdrop our time. I’ll just say here that I don’t mean at all to make light of the current state of the world, and I am keenly aware that working in my studio does almost nothing to make a positive difference. But action does help us keep despair at bay.

Crossing My Wires No. 21.5, paper assemblage

If you would like to destroy and rebuild with me, consider my weekend workshop coming up in May in Lebanon, New Hampshire. Find information and sign up here.

Existential Crisis No. 67.9

Existential Crisis Without a Number

Existential Crisis No. 71

These are each 19″x24″ works on paper.

Valentine Card Workshop

Well, sort of. “Shape, Line and Color” is the emphasis of the workshop, and we are using the heart shape as a tool for studying these aspects of visual language.

This is a short one-off workshop on Zoom, Friday, February 9, 4:00 – 5:30 pm Eastern Time. See details and sign up here. The supplies are simple: collage papers (a variety of solid colors and patterns), scissors, a glue stick, and card stock or whatever you like for your card material. Paint markers are helpful, but not essential.

Here are a few examples of heart collages you can make!

I hope you will join me! Click here to sign up. It’s short, it’s cheap, and you will get TONS of insight and ideas. Plus, you’ll make your Valentine cards well before Valentine’s Day.

Assemblage with Paper

I call this process assemblage rather than collage because rather than gluing pieces of paper to a surface, I am gluing them together by overlapping and reinforcing. It’s part of my attempt to make a dent in the amount of collage papers I’ve accumulated.

I am teaching a weekend workshop at AVA Gallery in Lebanon, NH, on May 4 – 5, Composition Outside The Box: Collage and Assemblage. This process of assemblage allows you to add, subtract, overlap, glue, tear, and stitch your materials together into surprising works of art! It gives you an entirely new perspective on what it means to compose, an what a composition is. Enjoy the video. Learn more about the workshop here.

Virtual Paint Mixer

Golden Artist Colors has a generous supply of resources on their website for anyone painting in acrylics, oils, or watercolor. Here is a little video screen cast that shows just one way to use Golden’s Virtual Paint Mixer tool. There are more features that you can explore on your own, and maybe I’ll do more video, but this will get you started. If you are having trouble finding your way to a particular color, this could be a huge help.

Artist Statements

Anyone have trouble writing an artist’s statement? Or reading one? Have you ever written one or been asked to write one? If you have shown your work, whether in a juried show or on your own website, you have probably encountered this challenge.

When you see a show at a gallery, do you read the artists’ statements? What do you find there? You can count on the art to be selected as worthy or appropriate to the venue. But it seems to me that artists’ statements rarely are. Consider the following (name withheld on the example I find unhelpful):

This is a statement for a show of sculptures I saw recently. I did not see the conceptual mutability in the unique and common household and industrial objects and materials. I saw different materials expertly crafted into objects that held very little meaning for me. I was left with more questions for the artist than insight into the work.

This statement is for a piece in a group show of quilts. It gives me a deeper appreciation of the piece through specific information. As a viewer I want to know what inspired a piece or a body of work; what ideas the artist is chasing; the issues that are important to the artist – whether formal, referential, or metaphorical. After reading Leslie’s statement I can make connections between the piece and the issues and objects she is thinking about. And I can make my own connections as well. You can see the quilt here.

I found the same disparity of artists’ statements when looking through them on a gallery’s website. There is not one way to write an artist’s statement, but as a viewer I want a statement to tell me something that will give me insight into the work.

I’ve heard artists defend their refusal to write statements by saying “the art speaks for itself”. That is completely within their rights to refuse to write. Still, I think it is a good exercise to write about your work, even if only to get clarity on why you are making it.

What have your experiences been in writing about your work?

A New Year

Planning, brainstorming, setting loosely formed goals (these are my Moving Targets), and getting them down in writing, are among my favorite mental activities, and I practice them year round. So I love this time of year when it’s culturally acceptable to reflect on the past twelve months and plan for the coming year. I often start with: What do I want to learn this year? And: What are my priorities?

A few of my 10″x10″ Moving Targets

Last year I wrote a post about PLAY. Take a look here. I set the loose goal of making play, in the studio, a priority. Have I done that? I think I’ve definitely shed some of the Must Be A Professional baggage. In 2021 and 2022 I put some effort into getting more gallery representation, and then discovered that making gallery representation a priority was getting in the way of my process. So 2023 was to be a year of play. In the studio. And I think, with inspiration from my students and my teachers, I managed to get goofy and expand what I think of as “my work”.

Why are all my faces looking to their right (my left)?

I did a lot of cutting up and reassembling of work in 2023.

There are loads of skills I want to learn and practices I’d like to implement (drawing more often, going to museums more often, learning more of the Adobe software I’ve been paying for, etc.), but I’ve never been good at Sticking With A Plan or obligation. Setting priorities makes more sense to me, and keeps me as focused as I’m able to be (not very, but not completely off track either).

Accordion Books

Painting and Collage on Cardboard

Getting Goofy

What are your art-related reflections on the past year, and plans or priorities for 2024?

2024 Calendar

Thanks to those of you who have asked about the 2024 calendar. It’s ready to go, and will be downloadable from my next newsletter, going out this Friday, December 8th. You can sign up for my newsletter here, or wait until Friday and I’ll put a link in this blog. Here is a little preview of February. All of the images were created in 2023, and they are all cropped carefully to fit the calendar template. This kind of cropping is fun, and it generates new images!

What plans do you have for 2024? Do you acknowledge the closing out of one year and the beginning of new one? Or is this time of year significant to you in other ways?