Statement

One of the joys that I have found in my life-spanning collage practice is the hunting and gathering of imagery and building something entirely new. The contrast of texture or color, the proportion of the parts to each other, the emphasis placed on parts of composition (or not); meaning reveals itself and is defined by the addition of one part to another. Art is about exploration and decision making, and I see the practice of collage as similar to deciding on how to draw a line, or putting two colors next to each other when painting.

Recently, I have been considering the connection between semiotics and the appropriation of found and repurposed imagery, and the recontextualizing of fragments of the printed page. Bits of text, phrases, parts of sentences have been added to recent work, some more subtly than others, to add a sense of questioning when experienced with imagery. Ultimately, the resulting work explores what it means to be human in the natural world and the one we have made for ourselves, and the compositions manifest in images that have recognizable forms, seen in new and unique ways.

 Composition has consistently been a key aspect that drives images towards an aesthetic and ultimately their meaning or message. As I juxtapose found images and text, those contrasts help shape what I am trying to communicate, or at least prod the viewer into thinking about the relationship between words and pictures. Often, they are absurdist in nature. Although influenced by Dada, the Beats, the French New Wave films, and punk, I am addressing the zeitgeist (which is pretty absurd itself), and striving to be authentic; these images are not meant to emulate or be derivative of the work of other artists. These images are who I am, and I am these images. 

Brad Terhune

April 2024