The Collage Miniaturist

I’ve been out on location, painting in papers — to build a new series of collage landscapes that I shall talk more about soon!

Did you celebrate World Collage Day?
Check out this Instagram tag and be amazed.

My Oh So Fallible Intuition
collage experiment by J A Dixon
6.25 x 6.6875 inches
a salute to World Collage Day, 2022
available for purchase

I really enjoyed PAACK’s chilly kickoff outing at the home of Mrs. Penn. As everyone began to focus on her exploding flower beds, I turned my attention in the other direction (for some odd reason). I couldn’t deny an interest in her staging nook near a teal fence (in the same way I was captivated by the back of Tillie’s garage last year). I’m completing the collage I started that day, and it will be a challenge to finish it for our summer show within the 50:50 limitation. I wouldn’t mind interpreting the gardening table, but I’ll need to omit that element to pull this off. I’d rather “move” the nearby bird feeder into my composition for a splash of complementary color, and also to find some way, within the remaining time, to “paint” the hay bales with paper ingredients.

Do I have to count the minutes I spend staring at my reference photo?
 
 
 

My 50:50 time constraint will necessitate simplification,
but inserting the colorful bird feeder is a given!

1979
collage miniature by J A Dixon
4.75 x 5.0625 inches
collection of Dana Lynn Dixon

Thanks for your interest in my collage landscapes. Click on each thumbnail to view a larger image. Click here to scroll the original blog posts.

Now you can buy most of these at the Arts Connect website!

“Follow the ways of natural creation, the becoming, the functioning of forms, then perhaps starting from nature you will achieve formations of your own, and one day you may even become like nature yourself and start creating.”
— Paul Klee
 

As I pushed toward the hanging date for Change of Seen last month, I pulled out an unfinished work. In 2020 it had been my hope to complete it as part of the Paint By Nature entry — an interpretation of an urban oak tree. Everything was done except for the tree itself, which I’d wanted to paste together in a burst of spontaneity. The “start” went into cold storage when I ran out of time for two submissions. Fast forward to January 2022. Now I had the ideal scenario. My tight deadline would not allow me to indulge any slowdown or second guess. Positive, unanticipated things often happen when I occasionally challenge myself to work under a severe constraint. The hesitant, rational mind is sidelined in favor of an intuitive response that is rooted in everything one has ever created. This can be the case with music, writing, or nearly any artistic format, but the phenomenon especially lends itself to painting.

Interestingly, I’ve always preferred watercolors to other paint mediums because of its unpredictability and the “happy accidents” that occur. I admire oils greatly, but they hold no attraction for me as I approach my 70s. I hadn’t expected to discover that “painting in papers” could captivate me so and knit a reverence for nature into my art. One of the primary appeals of collage is total flexibility. It’s almost impossible to make a blunder, if one stays “in the zone” without letting the intellect gain an upper hand. When others use words such as exacting or meticulous to describe what I do, it usually throws me, because I consider my approach as more instinctive. And yet, there is no denying the presence of “artisanship.” With any task at hand, craft is essential. It was drilled into me with rigor after I chose the path of applied design. (That the young are asked to dedicate themselves to a particular discipline and to ignore countless alternatives is a weird fact of life. Many of us spend decades unraveling it.) So, a certain precision is fused into my method, even when I’m racing the clock. One man’s chaos is another man’s perfectionism.

I’ve lived my adult life trying to spin creative gold in a studio of one sort or another. A supremacy of the natural world in my youth had been set aside as part of an itinerary toward the graphic arts profession. Reflecting on a long journey that leads to the ever-rolling “now,” I recognize that nature was always calling. It influenced my leaving big cities for a smaller community. It provided a firm foundation for my diet and a health-oriented lifestyle. It was an unfailing source for well-being when conditions seemed out of balance. Even so, an unsatisfied need remained elusive until I finally took paper and paste outdoors, where the potential for inspiration was out of arm’s reach. That I could respond with collage, and find it so rewarding, is something I hadn’t foreseen.

If you want to start with the first chapter, you can find that story here. It’s been almost five years of direct observation, and I’m itching to begin a new season of working en plein air. The broader point I’d like to make is how the experience also has invigorated the way I approach representational collage in the studio. It feels like it’s all been funneled into an evolving intuition. Working outside has transformed how I make visual decisions even when using photographic reference under pressure, as I did with Grand Chinkapin. After quickly preparing piles of printed scrap that seemed appropriate for tree foliage, I was able to explode those ingredients into place with a minimum of conscious thought — not unlike I try to do every time I take my collage kit on location. “Painting from nature with paper” has become a more integrated practice, inside or outside. Change of Seen shares this adventure with others.

Grand Chinkapin
collage with combined mediums by J A Dixon
0% / 100% — site to studio
11 x 7.75 inches + shadow-box frame
available for purchase

Immense thanks to Brett Henson, John Hockensmith, and Kate Savage for bringing this video to fruition! For anyone who wants to discover a bit more about my plein-air approach to making collage landscapes.

With another year of plein air activity under my belt, I had one image stuck in my imagination that I needed to paste together without any direct reference to an actual place. This last artwork for 2021 is included in my solo display, “Change of Seen,” at the John G Irvin Gallery in Lexington. A snowy deep freeze in Kentucky has blunted turnout for the exhibition so far, but everybody can see all the work by following my previous links during this month. Here’s to a hoped for but yet unfulfilled public reception that will entice more people to the show itself.
 

Sentinel
collage landscape by J A Dixon
7.125 x 9 inches
available for purchase

CHANGE OF SEEN
collage landscapes by John Andrew Dixon

curated by Kate Savage, Arts Connect
for the John G Irvin Gallery at
Central Bank, Lexington, Kentucky

Below are a pair of small skyscapes that I finished just before hanging “Change of Seen,” my collage exhibition curated by Arts Connect for a two-level bank gallery in downtown Lexington — 31 works total. A couple of studio miniatures seemed a fitting addition to what coalesced as my first all-landscape display and a retrospective of sorts for my five-year journey into representational collage. All during 2021, I couldn’t take my eyes off the changing sky, or stop thinking about how I might interpret it by pasting colored paper, tissue, and reclaimed tea bags. These two pieces are from imagination and memory. I kept layering torn ingredients until I was satisfied with the impression.

Kevin Nance wrote a brief review of the show that was perhaps too flattering. It’s been almost a week since the opening and my feet aren’t fully back on the ground yet. I cannot imagine a more able curator/impresario than the assiduous Kate Savage, a tireless catalyst for all things ART in our Bluegrass region. As just one of the multiple services she’s offering to help spread the word, her non-profit will sponsor a shopping page at the Arts Connect website during the run of my exhibition.

Please check it out!

Rose at Daybreak
collage miniature by J A Dixon
6 x 7 inches, framed 11 x 14
available for purchase

Summer Sundown
collage miniature by J A Dixon
6 x 7 inches, framed 11 x 14
available for purchase

“Collage is a fantastic tool to modulate the strain of life and associated feelings.”
— Laurie Kanyer
 

This one was started some time ago, in response to the Paradise conflagration, but I had no determination to finish it until after a deadly storm front came through our region last Saturday.
If you can, please reach out to help.
 

Ticket to Trauma
collage catharsis by J A Dixon
8.25 x 10.625 inches
available for purchase