Archive for the ‘Works in progress’ Category

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Thirteenth chapter — enduring the emissions . . .

Saturday, August 22nd, 2026

“I hope to have God on my side, but I must have Kentucky.”
— Abraham Lincoln

I did not create anything specific for July’s 250th commemoration of the Declaration, but I figured I should finish off a plein air collage piece that I started during the summer of 2025. I put final touches on Tower of Boyle for OBSERVING LIGHT, the current exhibition by our Plein Air Artists of Central Kentucky at Art Center of the Bluegrass in downtown Danville. If you are in the area, I hope you get to see the show!

It seemed like a good idea at the time. Tackling our courthouse tower with collage proved a bit tricky after I found a spot to sit on Main Street. The noise and truck exhaust was more unpleasant than I expected. At any rate, I blocked it out and added enough detail to offer a fighting chance in the studio. “Gimme that countryside!”

I have not typically interpreted local landmarks and historical architecture, but I challenged myself with this distinctive cupola when the PAACK gathered in downtown Danville. The Boyle County Courthouse has an interesting story. It was completed during the Civil War and almost immediately became a hospital for casualties from the Battle of Perryville. Because the backyard of our home and studio adjoins the Courthouse boundary, we have lived in the shadow of its familiar clock tower since 1990. Perhaps it is just me, but something seems fitting about adding this to my paper creations during the year that America celebrates an important anniversary of its founding document, since so many people were caught up in a battle to determine its promise for Kentucky and the Union. Some of the wounded soldiers survived with the care they received beneath the Boyle icon, and others died there, so far from their own homes. Abe’s peculiar wartime remark provides a hint of how vital the border state of Kentucky was to the effort, and the men on both sides of the bloody conflict near Danville surely knew it. Over a thousand of them paid with their lives.
 
 

Tower of Boyle
collage en plein air by J A Dixon
6.25 x 8.375 inches

•  S O L D

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A long gestation!

Friday, July 31st, 2026

It is hard to believe how long it has been since I first sat to observe the Caldwell stable with the Plein Air Artists of Central Kentucky. It would be two years before I returned to the same spot for more pasting, and now this panel is finished at last, nearly a year after that! At any rate, I am pleased with the result, so this piece will be included in our upcoming show at Art Center of the Bluegrass. My thanks to Marion and Rob Caldwell for the extended hospitality!
 
 
  

The 2026 exhibition of PAACK artworks will have five of my plein-air creations on display. The one featured here has a horse (Rocky) and a smaller piece includes cattle. Incorporating livestock into my pictorials has had a long and preposterous gestation, and, after tricking myself into breaking the ice at the 2025 Paint the Town challenge, I’ve gotten more comfortable this season with interpreting animals with collage.

It’s about time, don’t you think?
 

Stable with Rocky
collage en plein air by J A Dixon
found papers, tissue, gel transfers, tea bags
on canvas panel, 10.875 x 8.125 inches

•  S O L D

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A bit of heaven . . .

Friday, January 16th, 2026

“Yeah, I’m a loser at the top of my game.
I should’ve known to keep an eye on you.
Now I got a sky that ain’t never the same.
Yeah, I got a dream that don’t ever come true.”
— Tom Petty
 

During the closing months of my big traveling show, a notion kept intruding — perhaps I had peaked as a paper landscape artist. These kinds of pesky thoughts and feelings are not uncommon at any age. Why should they take me by surprise in the fourth
quarter of the game? Before long, I finished Haven on the Knob, and then the piece featured in this entry. That settled it.

The false point of my worry is demonstrably not the case, as far I need to be concerned. Others are entitled to their independent assessment. The first collage evolved as a multi-session, plein-air impression until I brought it inside for a lengthy finish. The second was time consuming, too — a studio-based commission from a provided photograph. Both benefit from everything I have learned about the potential of paper as a painting medium. Both combine intuitive abstraction and crafted precision for what I intend to be a pictorial representation that is full of lyrical expression. Please take a closer look at the development of It’s Heaven Back There:

As a collage artist, there is still plenty of ground in front of me to cultivate. There is no reason to believe that I cannot get better at using unconventional materials for a traditional genre of art. There is no reason to assume that I cannot apply my experience to portraiture and still life, or to bring it full circle to the legacy of non-pictorial collage, where my adventure with discarded stuff as art ingredients began. No reason for any of that concern. Unless I lose my focus about what a creative dynamic truly is.

People have told me my entire life that I had talent, as if that summed up everything. I was quick to accept and run with it, but, even in boyhood, something about it started to bother me, as if it was just the small part of a whole that remained hidden. Eventually it became clear that talent is simply the beginning — a gift, but also a profound responsibility. It’s not really worth much unless developed with education, discipline, ongoing effort, and perseverance. With that obligation comes the necessity of not only following a worthy impulse, but also conquering the doubts and fears that go with it. More importantly, it requires confronting the inherent pride that was seeded the very first time somebody said, “Oh, you’re so talented.” I don’t think it’s an inner process that ever goes away, and it can feel arduous from time to time.

For me, the challenge goes beyond unraveling what it is to be a creative individual, but what it means to be a soul called upon to put all the priorities of divine creation into alignment — to discover, by grace, the truth of my human nature, to understand the pitfalls along the journey that any recipient of talent is compelled to undertake, and to discern my intended role as a cooperative instrument of a greater purpose, as a grateful “agent” for the creative source of everything that was, is now, or ever shall be.
 

It’s Heaven Back There
Oldham County, Kentucky
collage landscape by J A Dixon
paper on canvas panel, 16 x 12 inches
private commission

Posted in Collage, Commissions, En Plein Air, Exhibitions, Ingredients, J A Dixon, Landscape, Methodology, Technique, Verse, Works in progress | No Comments »

Not plein air, but who’s keeping score?

Thursday, July 24th, 2025

“The key is not to imitate life,
but to create it anew.”
— Lalo Schifrin
 

Although I spent eight hours outside on the miniature featured below, it required too long an indoor refinement period for it to earn a plein-air designation. The process is what matters, and who’s keeping score anyway? The limitations of paper demand a process not overly dependent on what I actually see. So I put imitation aside and follow my Third Rule of Collage: “Intuition is worthy of your trust.”

Working in the sun dries my paste, but I found myself looking for shade when I got to DayCrest Farm. I picked a spot with plenty of depth that overlooked rows of poppies, lavender, and sunflowers, and I took a reference shot on my feet. When I sat down with my rig, I could barely see the lavender. Moving nearer, a new composition photo was closer to what I wanted, and I boosted the hues as I picked my colored papers.

I had mounted an old, ruined book cover as a substrate. It bled upward into a crumpled sky wet with paste. The unusual effect set a tone for the interpretation, which I carried forward with a more active horizon and a bold base of color. I liked how an accident helped tie the whole thing together back in the studio. When I integrated the dappled sky with moody clouds and represented analogous flowers, the top linked itself chromatically to this horizontal band of lavender. The additional poppies at the base provided a fitting contrast with my chosen shades of green. Except for the unexpected bleed, all color comes from the scrounged paper itself, with no added paints or pigments.
 

Poppy Solstice
scrounged paper collage by J A Dixon
vintage book cover on structure
outside start, DayCrest Farm, KY

Posted in 1) Available!, Collage, Constraints, Ingredients, J A Dixon, L Schifrin, Landscape, Methodology, Rules of Collage, Technique, Works in progress | No Comments »

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.
 

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My backpack of backlog . . .

Wednesday, October 23rd, 2024

 

 

 

Although I aspire to create landscapes outside into the colder months, my season seems to be winding down. The number of unfinished artworks has become a significant backlog, so I shall be boosting my finishing hours in the studio. The ongoing challenge for me is always to preserve with minimal refinements the collage improvisations that I achieve en plein air.

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Collage in the U.P.

Monday, September 30th, 2024

 

Spent a chunk of September “painting in papers” while in the Les Cheneaux Islands. This recent method of pasting collage ingredients over a crude charcoal sketch really started to grow on me.

 

Here is an interim stage of completion for “Up the Channel.” The water foreground needs to be finished and softened. The shoreline can benefit from a few more details. Please stand by for the final version!

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Evolving creative intent with similar subjects

Friday, August 30th, 2024

“The writing and playing of music is a matter of intent…. You can’t just throw a paint brush against the wall and call whatever happens art.”
— Duke Ellington
 

There are so many old farmhouses and barns in our Knobland region of Kentucky, and they always hold my rapt attention as I interpret them in found papers. It is necessary, however, for me to quiet my busy mind and discover a soul connection to a particular natural place and the evident stewardship of those who have cared for it. Then, and only then, can I apply an intent to coax my intuition in an expected direction and to handle paper and paste with creativity.

I am pleased with what I achieved on the top half of this small canvas. The foreground is now due for an efficient studio finish.

Check out my series of posts that have described a seven-year plein air adventure, “painting in papers.”

 

At Walnut Springs (unfinished)
collage en plein air by J A Dixon
on stretched canvas, 10 x 8 inches
Plein Air Artists of Central Kentucky

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Twelfth chapter — finding the crest . . .

Tuesday, July 16th, 2024

“The spirit laughs at man’s concern with the form of Art, with new expression because the old is outworn! It is man’s own poverty of vision yielding him nothing, so that to save himself he must trick out in new garb the old, old commonplaces, or exalt to be material for art the hitherto discarded trivialities of the mind.”
— Rockwell Kent
 

I guess it was only a matter of time before I represented in papers the Kentucky icon of our vanishing small farm economy. It took me longer than usual to pick a spot to sit and paste papers during my visit to Daycrest Farm. With the help of Jason, one of the hospitable owners, I found a scene at the back of the acreage. I didn’t know what I was looking for, and I had to shake off the impulse to make another try at summer blossoms in the commercial flower gardens near the highway. I listened to myself thinking, “Haven’t you done this kind of view before? What do you expect to discover?”
 
 

The PAACK “Art Out” turned out to be beneficial for me because I approached what appeared to be an “already done that” rural setting with everything I’ve learned about “painting in papers.” After an insane timetable during the recent plein air challenge in Lexington, it was nice to tear and glue at my typical snail’s pace. Amusingly, the tobacco barn seems to levitate in my first interim image. Although content with the day’s work, there were too many spots that needed attention, so I couldn’t declare the collage finished when back in the studio. Minute subtleties like barn ventilators, fence posts, and complex foliage details are difficult ingredients to manage outdoors with even the mildest of breezes (which are most welcome when highs are in the mid 90s).

My love for books prohibits me from destroying useful ones for art. I only cannibalize ruined ones. I typically ignore the literal language and include it for pattern and texture, but in this piece I became a bit attached to what the fragments of sentences actually said. It’s interesting to probe the effect of linguistic connotations, whether or not the meaning can be discerned. My inclusion of “manipulated” verbal content has become so complicated that it’s hard to explain, even in a workshop context. At any rate, I like to remind viewers that it is, after all, a collage.

I am rather pleased with this landscape, and I hope it lands with a person who wants to live with it!
 
 

Tobacco Crest
collage en plein air by J A Dixon
12 x 9 inches + wood frame, crafted by the artist

•  S O L D

Posted in Collage, En Plein Air, Ingredients, Landscape, Works in progress | No Comments »

Collage outside stands on painting.

Monday, June 24th, 2024

“I think you have to know more than what is current and ‘hot,’ to use a loathsome word. You have to be familiar with the foundation of the work and understand it’s what you’re standing on.”
— Mike Nichols
 

 

My recent outing to Shaker Village involved a different approach to collage landscape when I made two detailed sketches first, with the intent to tear and glue paper on top of it. I have a keen interest in the fact that those who developed collage as a modern art considered themselves painters. I keep pushing to use paper outside with that foundation in mind. Partly due to my added preliminary time, I was disappointed in the degree of progress for the day. The second start with a more architectural emphasis will be put on hold. I would like to return to this exact spot. I may decide to finish the sheep enclosure rapidly in the studio (to preserve the overall impression and to retain its designation as a plein air artwork by staying within the 50/50 allocation of time), but it might be more desirable to go back and complete it on site. We shall see.
 
 

Sheep Enclosure, Shaker Village (interim stage)
collage en plein air by J A Dixon
12.5 x 5.875 inches

Posted in En Plein Air, J A Dixon, Landscape, Technique, Works in progress | 1 Comment »

From Their Special Place

Wednesday, June 5th, 2024

“We are part and parcel of the big plan of things. We are simply instruments recording in different measure our particular portion of the infinite. And what we absorb of it makes for character, and what we give forth, for expression.”
— Rockwell Kent
 

I returned to historic Caldwell Farm to coordinate an “Art Out” for the Plein Air Artists of Central Kentucky (PAACK). When I suitably had met my few obligations for the day, I went alone toward the heart of the acreage to locate a spot that the owners refer to as the “Special Place.” Along a well-tended pathway, near a quiet watershed, I set up my makeshift plein air collage rig. From that perspective, I sought to interpret in papers a far-off cluster of corn cribs and structures that once served as the focus of an innovative cattle-raising operation. Two different angles of this agricultural configuration previously had become part of my LITTER-ALLY KENTUCKY collection.

I found myself simplifying, simplifying. Paper demands it, of course, but also I had hoped to touch the essence of the early summer scene — a moody sky, the limited palette of buildings, plus an expanse of new corn, barely above the soil. Representational collage, if anything, must be about expression, not craft. What one is blessed to take away from contact with the fusion of nature, ingenuity, and intentional affection is left to individual receptivity. Being a so-called artist is not necessary to reap the potential benefits of experiencing rural beauty.

 

From Their Special Place
collage en plein air by J A Dixon
9 x 7.625 inches
private collection

Posted in Abstraction, En Plein Air, J A Dixon, Landscape, Methodology, R Kent, Works in progress | No Comments »

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