{"id":7609,"date":"2016-09-30T18:27:59","date_gmt":"2016-09-30T22:27:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.xorph.com\/jadixon\/?p=7609"},"modified":"2026-02-15T18:19:30","modified_gmt":"2026-02-15T22:19:30","slug":"does-this-have-anything-to-do-with-collage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/jadixon\/archives\/7609","title":{"rendered":"Does this have anything to do with collage?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n 
\"jadixon_waitingfordana\"<\/a>
\n <\/p>\n

Waiting for Dana<\/em><\/strong>
\ncombined mediums by J A Dixon
\n6.5 x 4.875 inches<\/p>\n

My honest answer to the title question \u2014
\n\u201cWe won\u2019t know until I finish this post.\u201d<\/p>\n

During my annual \u201cfishing retreat\u201d in Les Cheneaux<\/em><\/strong><\/a> on Lake Huron, I convinced myself to make a small painting for the mate who holds our fort in Kentucky. It disturbed me to confront the idea that I had fallen woefully away from my practice of drawing or painting en plein air<\/a><\/em>, so I found a spot to sit and scraped some rust off my lost habit. If a tradition of plein air<\/em> collage exists, now or in the past, I so far have not discovered any evidence. One would think that the medium does not lend itself to it, but there is no fundamental reason why collage cannot be executed out of doors, or benefit from direct observation of nature or the built environment. If we are to think as the artists who \u201cinvented\u201d it, <\/a>collage is another variation of painting. And painting, as we know, is not about visual replication, but about capturing what the artist \u201csees\u201d \u2014 in the fullest sense of the word.<\/p>\n

As smiling fortune would have it, I had the opportunity to view a presentation of Painted Land<\/em><\/strong><\/a> at the Lake Superior State University Arts Center<\/a> (in nearby Sault Ste. Marie) as a part of my visit to the Upper Peninsula. Proceeds from the screening of the new documentary helped benefit the Lake Superior Watershed Conservancy<\/a>. The subject of the film is the Group of Seven<\/a>, the twentieth-century artists who took the Canadian consciousness by storm when they <\/a>rattled the national establishment with the first widely seen modern-art landscapes. The filmmakers successfully proved that the iconic paintings now revered by Canadians were created by the pioneering artists when they arduously discovered wilderness locations, and were not constructed from imagination, as many had previously believed. On top of that, most of these unspoiled sites in the vicinity of Lake Superior have the potential to remain so, if preserved and protected from development.<\/p>\n

The breaking of my plein air<\/em> dry spell, combined with a heightened awareness of how some of North America\u2019s most daring artists actually made their works, has overwhelmed me with new ideas about ways to invigorate my approach to collage and its relationship to the seen image. I don\u2019t know where these experiences will lead me, but those who follow my journey here no doubt will be the first to find out. Until then, thanks again for visiting.<\/p>\n

\n 
\n\u201cThe most important thing a painter can do is
\nfind a good place to sit.\u201d
\n\u2013 J.E.H. MacDonald
\n 
\n \n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Waiting for Dana combined mediums by J A Dixon 6.5 x 4.875 inches My honest answer to the title question \u2014 \u201cWe won\u2019t know until I finish this post.\u201d During my annual \u201cfishing retreat\u201d in Les Cheneaux on Lake Huron, I convinced myself to make a small painting for the mate who holds […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,11,437,216,202,154,668,54,151,217,12],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/jadixon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7609"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/jadixon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/jadixon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/jadixon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/jadixon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7609"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/jadixon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7609\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15554,"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/jadixon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7609\/revisions\/15554"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/jadixon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7609"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/jadixon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7609"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/jadixon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}