The Synthesis of Collage and Photo Processing
Understanding the photage process gives insight into the unique abstract images I achieve in digital painting. Photage is not the odd juxtaposition of visual language you generally associate with collage. For me it is an expressionistic, painterly, problem-solving process that begins with finding a rich and cohesive palette of fragments from recycled magazine pages. I then help each piece find its niche based on light and shadow, color, and texture dynamics. This focus on cooperation and symbiosis of parts is what paradoxically imparts a sense of calmness, strength of structure, and serenity in an otherwise very busy environment, a metaphor of my vision for a healthy earth.
"In a future series I expect to explore many more interesting color combinations and visual effects and perhaps create more loose, dynamic photages with more simplified patterns. However, since unpredictable is part of the definition of photage, I will be as surprised as my patrons to see what comes out next," I wrote in a previous artist's bio. Rereading this today, imagine my pleasant shock of realization that I have done just that, but not in the way I imagined. Digital painting has allowed me to push the photage images in the direction my artistic sense wants to take unfettered by the physical limitations of cut paper. I find that the interests piqued by photage, such as experimenting with light and shadow, depth of field, the balance of space, visual porosity of elements, mood and interaction of color, simultaneous micro/macro perspectives, and the commingling of straight lines and curves, can all be indulged using a stylus and powerful photoprocessing tools.
Traditional art training has been an immeasurable benefit in creating abstract depictions of qualities and sensations found in the collages and digital paintings. But while I can draw and paint, I consider myself more a constructionist and have always been inclined towards building, layering, combining found material, and the frugal and resourceful person's excitement in making something new and different out of something else. This seems to be the Nature's way of creating, and these new media dual-process artworks are my homage to and idealization of its many mysteries.
For a view of both photage and its spawn, digital painting, please visit: www.marlenestruss.com
