“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.
I’ve been taking a bit of a break from my art-making so I can unwind and experiment with other media. However, I’m still working away on collages here and there. This week I completed my latest commission, a tiger collage. The client had purchased my “Watchful Lion” collage, and was interested in getting a tiger collage to go along with it. She also wanted a sunset in the background of the composition.
So as I worked on this piece, I kept a thumbnail image of the “Watchful Lion” in front of me so I could make sure the new collage would look related to the previous piece. This one was definitely a fun piece to work on. I really enjoyed using all the bright colors.
Here’s a piece I made a couple months ago. It was for a fellow artist and Elon alum. I realized I hadn’t posted this one yet – so here it is!
At the moment I’m taking a break with making new collages, but once I get back to work I’ll make sure I post any new pieces.
And here’s the finished collage. There’s only two more collages in this series that I have yet to post. And once I have, I’ll be taking a bit of a breather from all of my art-making so I can relax and recharge my creativity.
My new landscape/cityscape series has given me an opportunity to intensely study my gray color palette surroundings in DC. When I decided to collage the National Gallery, I realized I needed to change things up a bit. Thus I created a composition where you can see bits of the building behind several trees. This added a little more color, and made the layout more interesting to tackle.
Lemurs are such unusual critters. I just love their eyes – they always look somewhat cartoonish. And I had a lot of fun putting this piece together.
Lately, a lot of my animal collages have been in the larger size I work in – 18″x24.” I decided that I really needed to create a series of bigger animal collages. It helps if you have a variety of sizes to pull from when working on an inventory for an upcoming exhibit.