Mixed Media Assemblages
MIXED MEDIA ASSEMBLAGES
In my mixed media assemblages, I collect shed tree bark, fallen broken branches and dead or withered plant materials, as well as moss, lichen, shells, stones and other natural forest elements that I have picked up off the forest floor while on my woodland strolls. Combined with traditional artist materials, I then breathe new life and meaning into these found woodland objects by creating richly textual artworks. What was once discarded and decaying debris is now renewed and transformed; a process I see as akin to alchemy and the concept of rebirth and personal transformation. I believe that the death and decay of a thing is merely a vehicle for transformation, and it need not indicate finality, but rather signify a metaphysical and metaphorical leap forward into renewal. I see this amazing process playing out everywhere in the natural world and in the human journey. Nature and humans are always in a state of flux, continuously in the process of transforming and renewing, dying to the old and embracing the new. But is there a point when the process of renewal has a final ending and what once was no longer exists? Is there a last a single transformation? This work and these questions are an intense and laborious process. Exhausting and invigorating at the same time, yet the questions are unanswerable. So we must, as Rilke stated, live the question. Perhaps gradually, without even noticing it, we will find ourself experiencing the answer, some distant day.
