A Found Collage

As much as it's a pain in the ass to be forced to work in a corner of the kitchen, constantly needing to root around in boxes for various paper, canvas, brushes or "that thing I really need right now (insert name of badly needed yet totally elusive item here)," storing my things in our damp cellar, and tearing my hair out daily with the chaos of dealing with no studio while my new one is being built, it does have its advantages.

Having to poke around in all of those cartons, portfolios and crates over and over and over again has unearthed some artwork I haven't thought of in months or in some cases, years. Every last piece is totally insignificant (trust me on this), but each represents my experiments with new techniques (for me at any rate) at the time they were created.

This collage was one of the first large-scale pieces in which I used the technique of hand-tinting photographs with oil paint, an extremely time consuming process that lost its thrill for me super quickly. Those in the photo industry back in the early 20th century must have rejoiced with the development of color film because having to hand create color tinted photos sucks. It really does. That said, I used it on a few mixed media and photo collages before I grew immensely tired of it all and moved on. This was one of them.

Metamorphosis, mixed media on board, 2008