Make a “Hop Stop” at CAMP on North Third during this evening’s Band Festival kickoff in downtown Danville! I’ll be greeting art lovers from 4:30 to 7:30pm, inside Central Kentucky’s most distinctive retail environment!
Archive for the ‘Artists/Collage’ Category
Thursday, May 29th, 2025
A Living Connection
Thursday, May 22nd, 2025“That seems to me the great American danger we’re all in, that we’ll bargain away the experience of being alive for the appearance of it.”
— Mike Nichols
From the time that I began to exhibit collage, people have responded positively to art made from stuff that would otherwise be recycled or thrown away. They like the idea that anything cast off can be repurposed and infused with new meaning and a measure of beauty. Collage is ideally suited to individual response and offers a universal experience. Nearly everyone can understand and relate to cutting and pasting paper.
On first impression, people often think my landscapes are conventional paintings — until they move closer. At the same intimate distance the works were created, viewers find only paper ingredients, fragments of printing, and layers of torn edges. It’s been rewarding for me to witness this sense of discovery, a reaction similar to what I’ve experienced by exploring the potential of paper. This living connection with others doesn’t happen with a digital exchange. It fires my enthusiasm for representational collage as an artistic concentration.
Opposite Old Lick
Sunday, May 18th, 2025 
Opposite Old Lick
collage on stretched canvas by J A Dixon
10 x 10 inches, 2025
private collection
Kaleido-Scraps!
Saturday, May 17th, 2025“No, you never think you’ve made it. To be respected by my peers is the most I could ask for.”
— Freddy Cole
I broke into the collage world twenty years ago and eventually gained some recognition with contemporary practitioners for my fine art approach to the medium, just as social networks were taking hold. My recent emphasis has been in another direction, as those of you who follow this site are fully aware. I still aspire to “make it” in the realm of nonrepresentational collage, but that may not happen for a guy who “paints in papers” as a landscape artist.
I enjoy periodically coming back to the tradition of Merz, and here’s a lyrical piece that I created for tonight’s fundraising auction and random draw. The business of art should involve some community pro bono work, as with all professions. Yes, I’ve pontificated about this before. To help needy nonprofits appreciate the value of creative labor, I maintain this rule of thumb: keep donations modest, infrequent, and local.
Kaleido-Scraps
collage on stretched canvas
24 x 18 inches, in the Merz tradition
LITTER-ally KENTUCKY travels to New Albany
Tuesday, April 22nd, 2025You are invited to visit Kleinhelter Gallery next month to view LITTER-ally KENTUCKY in New Albany, Indiana.
This collection of collage landscapes created en plein air makes its fourth appearance, and I’ll present my first multi-day workshop in June. Stop back here soon to learn more about these hands-on opportunities and to register for a spot. New Albany (just across the Ohio from Louisville) is a splendid destination. I hope you make plans to see these artworks in person!
Painting from life with paper and paste
Saturday, March 15th, 2025“I don’t want a picture, I want a painting.”
— Raimonds Staprāns
Sometimes a day on location feels like “going to work in the morning again.” By the time I find a good spot to sit, everything changes. Being present in a natural place elicits the rapt attention that calls for the immediacy and spontaneity of painting from life. For me, it just happens to be paper and paste. That it would turn out this way is something I never could’ve predicted. Included here is my “start” from a recent outing to Marion County, Kentucky. In the studio (without a breeze), I shall add two round bales and the essential dose of March daffodils.
Fat Tuesday Catharsis
Tuesday, March 4th, 2025
Fat Tuesday seems as good a day as any to finish a pair of collage miniatures that clearly fall into the category of “catharsis.” Not all artwork in the Merz tradition is specifically purgative, but the synchronicity inherent in this dynamic approach lends itself to the impulse.
The genre is ever with us to explore
Wednesday, February 26th, 2025“I called it Merz. This new process whose principle was the use of any material. It was the second syllable of Kommerz. It first appeared in Merzbild, a painting in which, apart from its abstract forms, one could read Merz, cut and pasted from an advertisement for Kommerz und Privatbank. I was looking for a term to designate this new genre, for I could not classify my paintings under old labels such as expressionism, cubism, futurism, and so on.”
— Kurt Schwitters
Mere Scrupulosity
collage miniature on canvas panel
8 x 10 inches, in the Merz tradition
our living landscape . . .
Friday, January 31st, 2025“The landscapes that I choose to paint are tied by a common thread, a sense of nostalgia, a setting that at once is current, but also captures a sense of the (Sacramento) valley that hasn’t changed for many years. I believe that landscapes live in us.”
— Phil Gross
While away from the studio, with limited collage ingredients, I made a miniature copy of a splendid oil painting by Phil Gross. I’ll probably add a few finishing touches and then decide if it’s appropriate to sign it. This turned out to be a very different kind of exercise than any other paper landscape that I’ve done. My thanks to Rowland William Breidenbach for the opportunity to spend time with this landscape.
California Theme (after Phil Gross)
unfinished collage landscape by J A Dixon
10 x 8 inches
framed: 16.75 x 13.75 inches
• S O L D
American Janus
Wednesday, January 1st, 2025“My father told me when I was a little boy that people in authority lie and the job in a democracy is to remain skeptical. I’ve been science-based since I was a kid. Show me the evidence and I’ll believe you, but I’m not going to take the word of official narratives. The way you do research is not by asking authoritative figures what they think. Trusting experts is not a feature of science, and it’s not a feature of democracy.”
— Robert F Kennedy Jr
When I indulge the impulse to have a collage catharsis, the Fred Otnes influence of my editorial past often bubbles to the surface. So be it. Wishing everybody a new year brimming with creativity, marked by discernment, and devoid of fear!
American Janus
collage catharsis by J A Dixon
11 x 10 inches
Saturday, December 28th, 2024
Nine segments from 2024 artworks of which I am still fond — aesthetic beauty within the Merz tradition continues to wrestle pictorial collage for my attention. Which approach do you favor in the coming year?
CLOCKWISE TO CENTER:
La Monda’s Refuge, Wind Harbor, Our Lady of the Cheap Shot, April Burst, Down Side Up, Unprotected Speech, War and Peace, Maybeland, Up the Channel