This is a mixed media collage that I made back in high school, “Running Water.” I remember that I made this around the same time I started exploring the collage medium, and quickly grew to love it. This piece is a little more like a traditional collage since you can see distinct fragments that I cut from different magazine images. I also used acrylic paint and oil pastel along with the magazine clippings.
After relaunching my portfolio site, I’ve finally had some time to make some new artwork. This is the first eagle portrait I’ve ever done, and it was interesting tackling an animal portrait after spending so many weeks immersed in coding websites and not making artwork.
The original is available for sale in my online store.
This is a mixed media collage that I made back in high school – can you tell that I may have been inspired by Picasso at the time? Growing up, I was an aspiring writer. I was constantly scribbling poetry and stories in spiral notebooks, so it was only fitting that I made a work of art inspired by my life as a writer. This piece is made of magazine clippings, oil pastel, pen, and includes an actual broken pencil and balled up piece of paper adhered to the surface.
This is a commission that I completed for an author who lives in California. She wrote a story about a collage artist in the DC area, and she thought it was only fitting to hire me to make a collage inspired by a description from the book. This piece was inspired by a passage that described a work of art created by the fictional artist – a box of memories with light swirling from it. I definitely had a lot of fun creating this piece, especially since it was a little different from what I normally make.
Here’s another collage that I made back in high school. This was during my phase where I was focussing a lot on figurative art and also liked to draw on top of my work with oil pastel. As you can see here, the figure was drawn almost completely in oil pastel. There was actually cut paper underneath all that drawing. It was during this phase when one of my classmates asked me why I always covered up all my hard work by drawing on top of it. It was at that point that I realized I should try to make works completely from paper – and see how I could accomplish adding shadows and highlights just by manipulating cut pieces of magazine strips.
“I Dream on Sunsets with my Head in the Clouds” is a collage that I completed back in high school. This was back during my phase where I’d draw on top of my collages with oil pastel – which you can see a little bit of here.
This piece is a little more abstract than the other collages I was making at that time. And yet again I find myself getting inspired to make new work as I sift through pieces I’ve made in the past.
The other day I received a request from a client in Canada to create a collage of the Calgary Tower. Architectural elements are always more difficult when working on a smaller scale, although I enjoyed the challenge. After spending a lot of time focussing on animal pieces, it was also nice to change things up a bit with a building.
Last night I completed my first collage in 2015. This piece was commissioned by a teacher from Washington state, who is having her students study my work in class. I think it’s absolutely wonderful that she reached out to me to have a work of art made that she can share with her students, so they can see one of my collages in person! I also had a lot of fun working on this piece – especially with the detailing for the gator’s scales.
And now I’m off frame and prep the collage for shipping…
A couple of weeks ago I completed this commissioned collage of a red fox. I definitely had a lot of fun working on this one. I enjoyed working with the color palette and finding bits and pieces of texture to add alongside solid pieces of color. Foxes are such beautiful and colorful creatures. No wonder I liked putting together this collage.
After completing a few still life collages, I just had to change things up a bit and make another animal collage. This piece was inspired by one of my strolls in a park in Chicago. A bird flew over to where I was sitting and got pretty close to me. So I had to take out my camera and take a quick snapshot.
I had fun tackling this piece, and I think that I may return to making another animal series. It all really depends on what inspires me when I start sketching a few more possible pieces.