How to Rhyme a Photograph (unique analogue collages)

Each of these collages begins with a photograph: a rusted metal wall in Himeji, paint on a door in Santa Fe...a shadow on a wall in Gallipoli. In the context of its location, the photograph is a document. It records what I notice. Because I have been interested in art my whole life, I notice surfaces. I believe there is value in responding to form and shape on a purely visual level- it's a way of attending to the world around us. And if we can appreciate the harmony and symmetry of a fence, perhaps we can extend that appreciation to the wider world.

In these collages, photographic fragments become anchor points for visual explorations. By positioning these pieces of photographs beside scraps of paper and using coloured pencil or gouache to emphasize certain details, I coax out qualities of surface that might otherwise go unnoticed. "Everything is truer at a remove," poet Randall Mann writes." Out of the context of its location, a wall might be seen as a work of art. Maybe it already is.