A Contemporary Artist, Tearing it Up

One morning last August, I landed my little float plane on the still surface of Lake Thonotosassa, east of Tampa, Florida. Floating over clouds reflected in the glassy waters below, I took a number of photographs.

I’ve recently torn up some of those photos to create new art. I’ve also integrated human figures into other new abstract pieces created from real-world photography.

This isn’t the first time I’ve used torn paper. In my early pieces from 2019 I used torn-up drawings to create montages, which I then photographed. Sometimes I use photographed montages of torn-up images as background in a final piece overlaid with additional material.

And I have made collages of torn-up construction paper.

But this time I tore up paper in the same way I might have usually cut, to create interwoven imagery combining multiple scenes, or to create raw building blocks of color to assemble in a completely new pattern.

The tears seem to add emotional intensity and visual variety, making the final work more compelling. Keeping with my core belief that every piece is an experiment, the results surprised me, in a very good way.

Why Would a Collage Artist Rip Up a Perfectly Good Photograph?

A good photograph stands on its own. But I like to manipulate photographs to say something different, to evoke feelings not obvious and sometimes not even related to the original scene.

Seaplane on a Lake is disorientating. There’s a torn line of shoreline visible in the top third of the piece as well as a fragment of wing and strut. But above and below are fragments of water and sky.

The tears are visible, ragged white lines accentuating the fragments and adding their own rhythm to the overall flow.

Floatplane flying is a very immersive experience. The pilot must look out for hazards on the water and obstacles such as power lines above, and on the approach and departure paths. It requires good boating as well as aviating skills. One must always know where the wind is, where boats are, where swimmers might be, where floating trash (or alligators) might be lurking. On calm days, when the water is glassy, it’s impossible to determine one’s height above the water, and so one sets the airplane in a landing attitude while crossing the last point of visual reference, usually the shoreline, and reduces power into a gradual descent, knowing the height for certain only when the floats hiss with the sound of water contact.

Sometimes life is like that too. One sets up the best one can, and waits.

A Contemporary Artist, Using Torn Paper in Mosaic Style

I’m fascinated by spiral patterns that pull the viewer into the work. In the past I’ve drawn those patterns with marker, or used cut-up photos to create the effect.

But in Equanimity I made the entire mosaic of torn-up photographic prints. The pieces spiral out from an amorphous and offset center, one print after another torn into sequential strips and pieces, and some pieces floating independently above the melee of color and pattern.

Once again the tears accentuate the irregularities within the overall flow.

If you look closely, you will see recognizable bits of water, beach, sky, marina. There are little bits of the story, or stories within the story.

But back out a bit, and the bits and pieces, frozen fragments of time and place, locked in place with acrylic gel medium, make up a bigger narrative.

Life, one day, one bit, at a time.

The Human Reference Point

The human figure is haunting, compelling. In these new pieces it provides a reference point, perhaps a story we might imagine or project, giving context to a visual narrative.

I’d previously used my own face, and that of my parents, in some of my work. But a friend and fellow artist, Todd Richardson of Equality Florida, recently commented that placing a human in more of my pieces might be a good thing.

I was recently at Sunset Beach (Treasure Island, Florida) with a friend. We took a number of pictures, of beach, water, sky.

But some were of people, silhouetted in the water or setting sun.

I turned some beach, water and sky photos into abstract layers of squares, at varying scales as I went through several processes of abstraction.

Then I put humans in the picture: a man and a boy in one, having wordless communion at the end of the day; and a boy alone in another, facing the waves of an incoming surf.

No one approaches any piece of art, music, literature or dance devoid of previous experience. Previous experience provides the context in which one perceives and appreciates (or doesn’t appreciate) something not seen before.

Perhaps these figures add a bit more recognizable context, a grounding point for the viewer and a portal to a world of their own imagination.

I returned to Sunset Beach May 7 for the dedication of a plaque honoring the late playwright Terrence McNally, in front of the childhood home built by his father.

Coincidentally, Todd was master of ceremonies for the event that included McNally’s husband, the Broadway producer Tom Kirdahy, and Danté Murray of American Stage performing music from Ragtime, a McNally musical being performed in the park at St. Petersburg’s Demens landing.

Other Adventures

I traveled to Spokane for the April 29 wedding of my great friends Michael Shivvers and Erik Nunamaker. Michael showed me around the park on the River, and I took some photos that might end up in a future project.

The Assault, Continued

While in Spokane I was interviewed by KESQ, News Channel 3 in Palm Springs, regarding my assault there in January. As a result, the police received additional information on the suspect and several other instances of alleged assault by him and others, and one possibly related death.

A suspect in my case has been interviewed by police but as of this writing not arrested as the investigation into the incidents continues.

I continue to be contacted by men who are victims of sexual assault. I encourage them to report the assault to police, and to seek counseling as they heal from the trauma.