Painterly Collage
Images are ordered for visual flow rather than chronology. Scroll up.
The source material for these collages is my own ink-on-mulberry-paper paintings. Using scissors, razors, rolling wheels, and tearing, shapes emerge spontaneously much as they do when applying the ink itself. With a movement that goes through my whole body as well as my imagination, this dynamic is transferred on to the scissors---turn this way, turn that way, curve, cut, begin, and end. My hands trace the edge and at some arbitrary moment I cut instinctively without regard for what is on the surface. The ink bleeds through to the back of the paper giving every piece a two-sided possibility. This duality introduces instances of relatedness, difference, and serendipity that I could not deliberately create. Once mounted to a support, the collage resumes its former life simply as a painting.
Like living beings, these works move and gesture, generating uncanny resemblances that suggest life and presence. Standing, spinning, floating, twisting, and tilting, this mysterious embodiment is one aspect of abstraction that intrigues me.
