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Art of Collage

My Collage Style: When Unrelated Images Begin to Belong Together

I have never been particularly interested in making collage simply by arranging attractive images on a page. For me, the most interesting moment comes when images that have no obvious reason to be together suddenly begin to communicate with one another.

In an unusual world a flower does not need another flower. A horse does not necessarily need a landscape. A human figure does not have to remain inside a recognizable human environment. I am much more interested in what happens when familiar things are removed from the visual worlds in which we expect to find them and placed somewhere completely different.

Sometimes the result is beautiful. Sometimes it is strange, humorous or very unusual. Occasionally I cannot immediately explain why a particular combination works at all. I actually like that. If everything in an artwork can be explained before it is made, there is not much room left for discovery.

In my 25 years of art experience much of my analogue collage work begins without a precise plan. Looking through magazines and other illustrative materials has always been part of the creative process, but I do not necessarily search for a particular object.

I may notice a shape, an unusual piece of fabric, an architectural detail, a face, a flower, an animal, an interesting background or something much smaller that was never intended to be the focus of the original photograph. Once it has caught my attention, the question becomes what else it might become once it is removed from its original context.

This is one of the things I love most about collage. The person who created the original photograph had one purpose. I can give part of that photograph an entirely different one.

A dress can become a landscape. Architecture can become part of a body. A flower can become impossibly large. Something photographed as an accessory can become the most important object in an entirely new composition.

The longer I have worked with collage, the more I have learned that the useful part of an image is not necessarily the part the original photographer wanted us to notice.

The Relationship Matters

A beautiful source image does not automatically produce an interesting collage. In fact, sometimes an ordinary fragment becomes extraordinary only after it meets something else.

This is why I think of collage in terms of relationships.

Imagine a photograph of a rose. There is nothing particularly surprising about it. Put that rose beside a horse and something has already changed. Make the rose enormous in relation to the horse and the relationship changes again. Introduce an object that seems to belong to neither world and suddenly the composition begins developing its own logic.

That new meaning is what fascinates me.

Neither original image contained it. It appeared because the images met.

I sometimes think of this as the third thing. There is the first image, there is the second image, and then there is something created by their relationship that did not previously belong to either one.

That is where collage becomes exciting for me.

Scale Is Part of My Language

Reality is useful, but I do not feel particularly obligated to obey it.

A flower can be larger than a building. An animal can dominate a room. A tiny object can suddenly become monumental simply because everything around it has changed.

Changing scale is one of the simplest ways of changing meaning. We are accustomed to understanding the world partly through relative size, so when those relationships are disturbed, the eye notices immediately.

I don't necessarily want the viewer to think, That is impossible. I would rather reach the point where the impossible relationship begins to feel strangely convincing.

An original collage can create its own reality. Once we accept that reality, the question is no longer whether something could actually exist that way. We become interested in the world in which it apparently does.

I Like the Evidence of the Cut, but

My analogue collages are physical objects. I cut images from printed material, arrange them, move them, reconsider them and eventually commit to a composition. Layering matters. Edges matter. Overlapping matters. Different printed surfaces matter. A fragment that has travelled from one photograph into another visual environment carries some evidence of that journey with it.

This is also one reason I laminate my finished analog collages. Lamination has become part of my own working practice rather than simply something I do for storage. I know that other collage artists choose different preservation methods, and there are conservation considerations associated with any permanent treatment, but my own analog work has consistently ended with lamination

In 2022, circumstances temporarily separated me from the physical materials I normally used for collage. I did not have my magazines and other source material available, but I still wanted to create.

That was how I began making digital collage.

I was already using Canva as a paying client and began experimenting with the visual elements available there. The scissors disappeared, but I quickly discovered that much of my way of thinking did not.

I was still combining unrelated things. I was still changing scale, looking for unexpected relationships, building compositions and asking whether two images that had nothing to do with one another could create something interesting together.

Digital collage expanded my possibilities, but it did not replace my interest in physical work. Instead, it made me think more seriously about what actually defines collage. If the same visual instincts can move from magazines and scissors to a screen and then potentially back to printed paper, perhaps the defining characteristic of collage is not the tool.

Perhaps it is the way of seeing.

When Collage Became Wearable

Another unexpected extension of my collage practice came when I began using my visual work to create art-inspired clothing collections through Le Galeriste.

This was fascinating because an image designed as artwork behaves differently when it leaves the wall and moves onto fabric. The human body introduces shape and movement. A composition can wrap around a garment. Details appear and disappear depending on how the fabric falls. Something originally experienced as a flat image becomes part of a moving three-dimensional object.

It also made me think differently about what an artwork can become.

I don't believe every collage needs to be turned into a product, nor do I think commercial application should determine how an artwork is created. But once a visual language exists, there is no reason it must remain confined to one format. Collage can enter clothing, textiles, interiors, printed objects and other areas of visual design without losing the thinking that created it.