Class Content: Want to loosen up while experimenting with composition, color, and value? Mixed Media Collage is the perfect medium, and abstract art is an ideal platform. Collage allows the artist to experiment with shape, texture, placement, and values before committing to a composition. It’s adjustable, so it allows zero-risk experimentation. Abstract art is the perfect playmate if you want to explore the tenets of composition. It’s easy to be distracted by subject matter when painting something representational like a flower, landscape, or figure. With abstract art, the artist must command the eye of the viewer using nothing but shape, texture, line, color, and values.

In this class you will learn how to:
• Build a collage using a variety of papers, tools, and application methods.
• Create purposeful papers using a limited palette of a few colors plus black and white. You’ll be surprised by the range of options you can achieve with so little.
• Direct the eye of the viewer with your unique composition of shape and values. Abstract art has a voice unique to its’ author, allowing both artists and viewers a distinct sense of freedom and expression. Join me for some experimental fun. Discover what can be achieved with a little paper, scissors, 2-3 colors, and some glue!

Supply List: Click here to view the supply list

Biography: I have been a collage artist for 15 years and a collector for many more.
Initially, collage was appealing because it was accessible to me as a novice. Existing images could be cut, pasted, added, deleted, and assembled to make something entirely new. I learned to create palettes of color and texture from magazines and old books. While I often use paint to enhance or unify collaged images, magazines continue to be my primary medium. Re-contextualizing fragments of images into alternate realities captures my imagination. On a visual level, I enjoy the element of surprise. An automobile ad can become part of a face. A face can be hidden in a flower. Images that don’t generally belong together can be woven into a cohesive story. There’s a philosophical appeal as well. I have always been fascinated (sometimes horrified) by the malleability of communication. Leave one word out of a sentence or change the context, and the meaning shifts – with positive or negative impact. Images can be twisted just as easily. In my case, I enjoy spinning an image for artistic fun, statement, and discovery.

I feel honored that my collages have earned attention in Texas and Tennessee. My collages and poetry were featured in the “Art I Become” show at the George Memorial Library in Fort Bend, TX in 2019. I have been featured in juried shows including Oakridge Art Center, Tyson McGhee Airport, and Emporium Knoxville.

I consider myself to be an artist-in-training and hope that I stay that way! With a degree in Chemistry and an MBA, I spent most of my career as a management consultant. Retirement has allowed me to deepen my artistic skills. One hold-over from my prior career is that I thoroughly enjoy teaching. My workshops are filled with techniques to make collage fun and easy for artists at all levels. Come join me! Let’s rip some paper!