Artistatement

All around us, we see the physical appearances of people, things, and events.  But there is a lot more transmitted in the act of seeing than just information about these appearances.  The psyche, our emotional framework, interacts with the forms we perceive and creates a layered and mysterious personal reality.  We seem to always be moving in a web of forces that inspire, motivate, and trouble us.  Love, fear, doubt, joy, desire, and other, subtler flickers of emotion move us and lead to our complex states of mind.  It can be disturbing to feel the pull of these inner forces in our lives, but my artwork allows me to bring them out in a safe space.  The expressive face, whether human or fantastic, has been the main focus of my art since my childhood years.  I am fascinated by how our spiritual and emotional makeup can become very apparent through our facial expressions.  An image of a face can communicate feelings and emotions to anyone, without words or thoughts.  Each individual responds to specific faces differently, depending on his or her own life experiences and personality.  Although certain facial forms evoke universal reactions, I hope that my art reaches viewers on a personal level as well.

The collages started with my reluctance to make a "collage" for a class assignment.  It was an unfamiliar medium which did not interest me.  I could not think of a theme to work with, so I gave up and just flipped through a stack of magazines to gather cutouts that would magically fit together to fulfill the assignment.  Aimlessly sorting through the piles of pictures, I found myself attracted to all the images and shapes that could form facial expressions.  I was excited that I could create faces in a new way, formed by the most unexpected parts--a hubcap for an eye or a whiskey glass for teeth.  I never imagined that random images could form faces that I responded to and could shape as easily.  Seeing new faces popping out of magazines kept me quite entertained and interested enough to keep exploring the technique.  Strangely, the process did not feel entirely new and unfamiliar to me.  I realized that I was employing basically the same creative process that I used with my masks assembled from found objects--only they had turned into faces assembled from found images.  I see fragments of faces in all sorts of things, and they seem to want me to complete them so that they can take on new life.  I'd like to thank all the termites, jelly fish, sharks, frogs, table legs, planets, perfume bottles, and fossils out there who have made my work fun.

T.J.B. 2007