Collecting art and processes

One of the most common questions I get asked about my artwork is “How did you come up with that?” My process for creating artwork is so completely unique that it can be hard to really wrap your brain around it. But to be completely honest, I never set out to have this complicated multi-layered process, it was just a simple progression from one thing to the next and then to the next.

It started back when I was in college and I wanted colors that film couldn’t give me, so did an independent studies course and I researched and learned about hand coloring, then took that information and experimented until I got those colors I wanted. It was hand colored, but in a way that others hadn’t done it.

I also had an illustration instructor challenge me to incorporate my photography into some illustration assignments, which resulted in my first mixed media photo collages

Years passed and when I realized I was an artist and started working with hand coloring again, I was faced with the challenge of having two toddlers and not being able to walk away and come back to the photo oils I had taught myself to use, so I reached back in my mind to that illustration instructor again who had taught me how to work with layers of color pencils and then applied that to my photographs and realized it was even better than the paints at giving me the colors I wanted.

I started wanting to add more visual layers to my works and realized I could do that with photograms within my photographic prints, then playing with my kids’ watercolors, discovered that this was another way to add a looseness I was missing. Then added the pencils on top of those.

A bit later I felt a yearning when I was looking at textured mixed media works and a little voice in my head said, “So why don’t you do THAT?” And the next thing you know, I was experimenting with adding darkroom prints to canvases and using acrylic paints in layers like watercolors.

Every time I feel the itch for something new, like working with three dimensional objects, I start to experiment and play. A lot of artists do this, most of the time working with one medium and then the next. The biggest difference with me is that I just keep ADDING the new medium to what I am already doing, figuring out how to incorporate the new layer into what I am already doing.

In some ways it feels a little bit like hoarding, but really I think I’m just a collector of processes, which then makes it more interesting for you to be a collector of my art!