Digital Collage

My digital collages are comprised of photo’s I’ve taken, copyright free maps I’ve downloaded and satellite images I’ve screen captured and stitched together like a quilt. There was a long period in my life when there was no time to paint and taking photo’s and blending them in Adobe Photoshop offered creative release. But I was never satisfied with the printed giclee colors and missed the physicality of painting and the experience of oil on canvas. I now find myself returning to the digital collages as inspiration for painting subjects.

Peruvian Burial Mantles

Many years ago, my wife and I attended a textile exhibit at the Boston Museum of Art. There was a huge textile that gripped and moved me – an unusually large (55 7/8 x 94 7/8 in.) Peruvian burial mantle filled with brightly colored jumping/falling figures. I stood in front of it for a long time, lost in the colors and movement and taking in the calm induced by the pattern repetition. This experience inspired the burial mantles below:

Mystic River Dreaming Series

While working at Tufts University, I drove past the Mystic River every day on the way home, often stopping to take pictures and/or shake off the stress of the day. When I got caught in a brief afternoon shower one day, I began to wonder about the water molecules landing on my head. Had they, at some point in the past, evaporated into the clouds from the river or the Mystic Lake and did the river ‘recognize them’ as familiar or ‘known’? Was the water in the river sentient, did it acknowledge or sense familiarity in the return of it’s own water molecules? Was the river capable of dreaming? These thoughts inspired the Mystic River Dreaming series. Most of the my collages were created on the fly with little pre-planning, but each of the river series collages were planned in advance and have a specific order.

Portraits