The Collage Miniaturist

“Collage artists put things together to make something new, and often we are the ones who have taken apart discarded things to do it, but there is always a much larger phenomenon at work — one of discord vs harmony, mechanism vs intuition, wastefulness vs thrift, cynicism vs affection.”

— from July 29, 2016
 

My deep exploration of collage began over 20 years ago with a nonrepresentational approach rooted in the MERZ and DADA traditions, but my recent concentration has been in pictorial collage, which I call “painting in papers.” Many pioneers of modern art collage considered themselves painters, and I increasingly anchor my intuitive orientation with that awareness. This miniature landscape was created in the studio from imagination and memory — recollections of a grim sky, but the sun breaks through for a few seconds to illuminate the trees. This is among the seen images that stick with me. Increasingly, these are the experiences that make me want to paint.

The Kentucky farmer-philosopher Wendell Berry tells us, “Things that belong together have been taken apart. And you can’t put it all back together again. What you can do, is the only thing that you can do. You take two things that ought to be together and you put them together. Two things! Not all things.” It is his metaphor for the creative life, and a tremendously healing admonition to those of us with a tendency to become overwhelmed by the enormity of the world’s chaotic disintegration. When I return to the studio from a natural place, I am in a better condition to put things together, with the enduring hope for a modest artistic breakthrough. And then to leave. To go somewhere small in the world and to fix something that is broken.
 

Breakthrough
imaginary collage miniature by J A Dixon
6.75 x 4.875 inches