The Synthetic Freedom of Partial Collage

I have always had an inclination for visual art. Generally, when it came to my own work, this was drawing specifically. At first this was representational, then later a geometric style of abstract I call "deductive", since the central elements form rule-based patterns. I did not experiment much with painting until high school, and I struggled to find a style that suited me. I tried representationalism using watercolor. That went mediocrely. So I tended to stick with the formulaic deductive drawing outside of what I produced for art class.

Fast forward slightly:

I don't remember when it started, but sometime in college, I began a nonstop spree of creating abstract paintings and painting-drawing crossovers. I would paint and embellish with pens and markers. I experimented with paint pouring, and using unusual media such as cotton balls, hair mousse, and dish soap.

At some point, it occurred to me that I could throw things in the paint. Like little faux gears from the bead isle of the art store. Tiny clock hands from the same place. Small buttons spare from unknown shirts.

I saw this as an opportunity to experiment further with collage-adjacent techniques, which I admired in the work of my then-best friend and now partner, without being derivative. After a mutual phase of experimentation with unnecessarily complicated asemic writing, I combined the power of my various tools to create this, one of my proudest works:

The collage aspect would be present, but subtle, and overshadowed by the abstract paint. Like my partner, I incorporated small cut-outs from magazines and other scraps of paper (though I used scissors instead of the more committed X-Acto knife). I threw in gears and glued on buttons.

One summer, I took on a new project which blurred the line between collage, painting, and sculpture.

It was made from an old shirt, bed packaging wood and plastic, and a printed out "intentionally left blank" page from a PDF of a philosophy book. I sincerely hope whoever got it from Goodwill when I moved for the summer enjoyed it, as it was an excellent experiment in postmodern humor.

I've since mostly kept with a subtle, mixed-media approach to incorporating collage techniques such as cut-and-paste and novel juxtaposition.

See more of these projects below:

Unfortunately, since some trauma and the progression of bipolar disorder, I have not had quite the continuous zealous pace of inspiration as I did prior to that point. I think probably that being less heavily involved with psychedelics and learning to prioritize non-hobby tasks has also contributed to a lesser output. However, I do often have inspired stretches where I create digital art, and I had a nice phase of making digital-overlay collages after watching Stan Brakhage's Dog Star Man.

Here are some examples of my digital work from that phase:

While I generally prefer GIMP on my laptop for digital art, for these such projects I found using PicsArt, the phone app, to be quite sufficient.

Finally, here are two slightly more recent examples of this technique, the first involving my own artwork and photographs, and the second involving a close-up picture of some decorative tape:

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I hope you enjoyed this piece and the accompanying works of art. To see more of my art as I produce it, follow the page Skye Alexei Art & Creative on Facebook. You will find deductive and psychedelic drawings, mixed media and partial collage, abstract and vaporwave digital art, and occasionally poetry. Most of my physical art is de-facto for sale, and I do digital commissions as well. To support my art another way, you can send a tip below. Thank you for reading.