Paper Collage

(With a huge amount of thanks to the printers and photographers of National Geographic, my largest source of high-quality printed paper for as long as I can remember. Of course there is also gratitude for any source that has inspired this work.)

I've been doing this since I was 16, even after I stopped painting and making sculpture to try other things. This is the media I've worked with the longest, but really it's the idea behind collage that is my focus.

One of the oldest debates behind "fair use" and copyright affects collage. It's endless. Taking bits and pieces from the world around you and creating something new, which you take credit for, can indeed be called stealing. However the assembly of almost random elements into a new entity (and the process of doing this) is the point. It is also a very challenging method where failure is a fine line between too much or too little manipulation of the source(s). Like everything else the fine line will exist in different places for different people. The debate is endless.

My paper collage work has never been commercially used even though the experience has carried over to my digital Photoshop work. I earn no money from it but it does come from commercially generated sources like ads in fashion magazines, photo journals and even pornography. And here is another point. These works age better than my paintings, sculpture or other artworks because the longer they exist the more the context of this and that photo changes. I find that a beautiful thing.

The samples on this page only scratch the surface. There is a great deal more where this came from.

Much of this is socio-political commentary for me. I generate it from my own observations and relieve some of my cynicism within it.

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