Surrealism

Artist Statement

My painting is the Avengers logo, created with many lines and abstract, geometric, shapes. I'm continuing my Marvel theme from S-pride-rman (see Colour Design). First, I created my collage, as seen on the left. This was made with an old Crate & Barrel magazine, which I cut out and reassembled to form my collage. I liked that the magazine was very neutral in terms of colour, so I mirrored that in my collage with greys, white, and light beige or tan shades. I wanted to really focus on the collage aspect, so I didn't try to make the pictures line up or make sense. The factor that makes the piece come together in a cohesive idea is the logo and near-monochromatic colour scheme. While the cut-outs are random and abstract, the hard lines forming it into a decisive shape and the use of neutral colours brings it together. The same goes for my painting, which also uses neutral colours, but this time I only continued the greys and white and added red details.

My collage was made by finding those neutral colours and cutting them out in large shapes, then placing them over my pencil sketch and cutting them to fit inside the lines. My painting was first a rough sketch, then cleaned up, then painted. I used beige for the background, figuring the white would pop more if the background was a different colour, and then sketched in my shapes.

As you can see, the lines and shapes are different from collage to painting. The collage was a good starting base and I kept most of the elements from it. However, I wanted to change some things, like removing the light beige and taupe tones, and adding red, as well as cleaning up the lines. The collaged piece is softer, the shades are more similar (including the background). In my painting, the decidedly grey and white colours stand out more against the warm, tan, background. The lines and shapes are clearer, more geometric, less collaged and more definite. It's harsher, starker, yet carries over many of the visual ideas in the collage. Some of those ideas being the "introducing" and "love" texts, words that spoke to me after looking through the magazine and deciding my theme. Another is the peace signs, originally a drawing in a child's bedroom. I liked the playful and modern touch it added, and decided to keep it in my painting, though I made it more geometric it to fit the new style. Overall, I was very happy with how the collage turned out, and was pleasantly surprised when the painting, though different, was also successful.