FreshPaintMagazine Issue 1 • October 2013
Featured Artists Scott Barry Tom Berenz John Byrd Donna Festa Andrea Fuhrman Mihyang Kim Chintia Kirana Jerry Lyles Erin Murray Carmen Niichel Sara Pedigo Nicholas Scrimenti Jessica Simorte Laura J. Stein
On the cover: Tom Berenz, Melt, 65 x 71, acrylic and oil on canvas, 2012
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FreshPaintMagazine Issue 1 • October 2013
CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 02 From the editor
FEATURED ARTISTS 04 Scott Barry
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Tom Berenz
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John Byrd
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Donna Festa
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Andrea Fuhrman
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Mihyang Kim
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Chintia Kirana
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Jerry Lyles
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Erin Murray
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Carmen Niichel
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Sara Pedigo
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Nicholas Scrimenti
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Jessica Simorte
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Laura J. Stein
From the editor Dear Reader,
Welcome to the first issue of Fresh Paint Magazine. The idea behind this publication stemmed from my background as a painter, always having a need to connect with like minded individuals, longing to be surrounded by art and artists. I decided to create a magazine in which artists, as well as art enthusiasts, can inspire one another with their work and ideas.
the inaugural issue. I look forward to sharing the work of many other artists and writers, and bringing awareness to their talent and ideas through Fresh Paint.
As this publication grows and progresses, I plan to include articles and reviews of current events in the art world. I want to utilize and publish not only the work of emerging artists, but also the talent of new writers who are passionate about the arts.
Sincerely,
I hope you enjoy the diverse and surprising work of the individuals who were chosen for
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Scott Barry, 2 a.m., 24 x 48, oil on panel, 2013
Scott Barry http://www.portfoliopopup.com/scottbarry/ MFA Massachusetts College of Art and Design BFA
University of Massachusetts
I believe in a world of magic and mystery. Growing up in a small suburban town I spent much of my childhood escaping into books, TV, and movies. From light saber battles to singing frogs, Holden’s adventures through New York, and the brush strokes of masters, I dreamt of a world of grand experience and adventure. My work is a search for these moments, an attempt to find my own connections to the contemporary world I exist in, and those that have come before me that I wish to live up to.
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“Paint itself is a material made of the essence of magic. It is illusion personified, both an object and a space, it has the ability to poke holes through the walls of our reality allowing for glimpses of new perspectives.�
Paint itself is a material made of the essence of magic. It is illusion personified, both an object and a space, it has the ability to poke holes through the walls of our reality allowing for glimpses of new perspectives. Painting is a timeless language. An activity that is personal yet connects me with the legacy of those that have come before and have yet to come. With this I use the act of translating my experience of the everyday and mundane, interactions of light and form, in order to find the cracks in reality where beauty, magic, and truth exist.
Scott Barry, Windows, 16 x 12, oil on panel, 2013
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“The paintings are about an investigation of unlimited possibilities, applications, and styles within a painting�
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previous page: left: Tom Berenz, Watermelon Picnic 60 x 66, acrylic on canvas, 2012 right: Tom Berenz, Forest Wreck 65 x 70, acrylic and oil on canvas, 2012
http://www.tomberenz.com/ MFA
Tom Berenz My paintings are about my relationship to the world around me; cerebral and physical, intellectual and visceral. I use the disaster motif as a metaphor to discuss personal, sociopolitical, environmental and ideological issues. Through the motif of disaster, I explore the existential self and examine personal narratives, with some being more literal and others more enigmatic. Notions of loss, place, memory, space and time are central as I reexamine personal experiences from my past and present. The imagery is in constant flux, but always returns to a pile. A pile is everything and
MA BFA
University of Wisconsin Madison Northern Illinois University University of Wisconsin Oshkosh
it is nothing. It is a mound that once was and now isn’t; a mass of information, both physical and metaphysical, organized and chaotic. These works emphasize form over narrative. I inject painterly gestural forms with flat edited down shapes. This results in a striking dichotomy between the strong emotional subtext of the work and the stark rigidity of its execution. The paintings are about an investigation of unlimited possibilities, applications, and styles within a painting. I am interested in expanding the vocabulary within each painting and within the group. The work is ultimately about two-dimensional space, the
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Tom Berenz, Melt, 65 x 71, acrylic and oil on canvas, 2012
language of painting, and the way an aftermath site is transformed into a painting. I am interested in blurring the lines between realism and abstraction, life and death, beauty and horror, devastation and sublime. Everything we live with as Americans is delicately balanced – the cars (magic carpets/ death traps), houses (castles/ prisons), and wilderness (paradise/oblivion). I examine contradic-
tions within the idiom of painting by responding to the outside world. By reestablishing a different logic within the painting itself, I investigate how a painting can sit in a place that can only happen in two-dimensional space. I explore the in-between space that is neither real nor artifice, still-life nor landscape, natural nor artificial, messy nor clean, flat nor deep, and dynamic nor static.
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“My aim, as a painter, is to act as an archivist; merging the spheres of internal desire and external demands�
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left: John Byrd, Shona Thought My Abyss Was A Radiator, 60x60, watercolor and acrylic on polypropylene, 2013
John Michael Byrd My aim, as a painter, is to act as an archivist; merging the spheres of internal desire and external demands. I continually scavenge disorderly and absurd accumulations of agent images and represent them through paintings. These hyperbolic gestures encompass our many state of being human that can be erotic, theatrical, mundane and/or irrational. I select imagery for my drawings from an archive I have amassed that enables me to categorize my sources. I then work to deconstruct the imagery in a manner that fosters new content. I begin to draw, connecting threads, fragment to fragment. And, through this collapsing of original context, I create new dialog and a more clarified reality for these intertwined portrayals.
ceptual tool to remind my viewers that in order to restore humanity, we must first acknowledge and define objectification. By working from pre-existing images, I find the resultant paintings suggest a more compounded, complex narrative without being shackled to the original framing of the subject. My mode of recontextualization empowers the viewer to interpret them more symbolically and metaphorically. This allows for greater clarity within deviations of initial context and more variety of visual representation of the painted figure.
http://www.johnmichaelbyrd.com MFA 2013 University of Massachusetts BFA
Much of my source material is derived from pornography. The erotic nature of which implies overt objectification. But, I think it also hints at our innate need and capacity for catharsis. I use this dissolution of boundaries as a con11
2007 Louisiana State University
Donna Festa We wear our lives on our faces. These portraits of people I’ve known or who have caught my eye, each tell a story in their own quiet way. Using oil on wood, each painting is made quickly, in one sitting, in order to keep the loose, fresh quality of a sketch. The size is intentionally small in purposeful contrast with the greedy, loud and overstuffed society reflected directly in much contemporary art of recent decades. I am attached in a visceral way to the fluidity of oil paint and the
nuanced textural and lighting effects it facilitates, as well as traditions in portrait painting, although I am effected, in my attempts to capture glimpses of complex characters by the post-Freudian dissolution of the self in the age of virtual reality. Above clockwise: Donna Festa, The Gossips, 10 x 12, oil on wood Donna Festa, Wilberto, 6 x 6, oil on wood Donna Festa, Pretty in Pink, 5 x 7, oil on wood Donna Festa, Conversation, 8 x 10, oil on wood Donna Festa, Queens Dressing, 8 x 10, oil on wood
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“These portraits of people I’ve known or who have caught my eye, each tell a story in their own quiet way.”
http://www.donnafesta.com MFA University of Hartford, Connecticut BFA
University of the Arts, Philadelphia
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Andrea Fuhrman, Ozone, acrylic on Masonite, 2013
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Andrea Fuhrman http://www.andreafuhrmanfineart.com
I am interested in exploring themes of magnification, abstraction and imagination. Spontaneous gestures, pod forms, color and impulse guide my process. Discovery is key as I approach Masonite boards armed with a brush loaded with paint. I revel in mixing colors. It is a challenge to know when to stop, as the process is hypnotic. The refrain is to find beauty.
MFA 1995 Washington University, St. Louis BFA
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1993 School of the Art Institute of Chicago
Mihyang Kim, 13th, and Another 16th, 48 x 60, acrylic on canvas, 2012
Mihyang Kim My works are a sort of a journal, which is truly personal but at the same time belongs to the public. All of my experiences are connected to the outside world and each piece is connected to a story. I paint abstract emblems that stem from my interactions with people expecting their deaths, living as immigrants, or being disconnected from their pasts. My work represents my
sympathy and compassion for the pain they have. I record my emotional and experiential individuality, based on the situations in which I have found myself. The precarious state of nature and the human environment are important to my work, as both a context for and continuation of the empathetic humanity my art conveys. I have a strong sensitivity to the pain behind the stories that I see or hear in my daily experi-
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ences. Numerous narratives of death, ignorance, starvation, separation, destruction, and depression face me every day. The pain in my work is my visualization and interpretation of my feelings from these events. It is indirect and abstract, but based in reality. In my art, figures mix with human organs and elements of nature are handicapped. The limbs of figures are chopped and even though the act of suturing repairs some forms, important pieces of the figure are still missing. Fabrics
are burned and torn to distort images and embody absence. The figures are alone or in crowds, limping in the middle of nowhere, revealing their labor, sadness, and shamelessness. Images are flat, simple, and contain no unnecessary illusions. They are painted in muted natural colors that are unreasonably beautiful and peaceful. This maximizes and sublimates tragedy. My work is my own ritualistic ceremony where I can release the fullness of distress, which seems to be everywhere, and seems to be shared by everyone, at some time or another. In my process, there is sorrow, but at the same time there is beauty and irony. It is playful melancholy, a type of tragicomedy that has element of farce mixed with pathos and sincerity. My ancestors created the most beautiful farces in Korea when history went to extremes and people were eager to consume them to feel catharsis. This is the relationship I make with viewers whose suffering will come back to joyful beauty in their lives.
Above: Mihyang Kim, Hide Me If You Can, 40 x 48, acrylic on canvas, 2013 Below: Mihyang Kim, The Flower I, 52 x 58, acrylic on canvas, 2012
The biological, emotional and cultural influence on people, the serenity and devastation of nature, and the burdens of human society on our population and planet, all play a part in my work. Rather than releasing the daily encounters of suffering to fading memories, I hold the stories and resuscitate them to unbind hidden emotions that often go unnoticed, but are worthy of being shared. http://www.mihyangkim.org born in Jeonju, Korea MFA 2011 Claremont Graduate University BA
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2005, Chonbuk National University Korea
Chintia Kirana I never quite understood why my earlier works dealt with ruined architecture. Why dilapidated buildings? At the time, those images were the closest reference for expression of my emotions in response to my childhood memory. My family and I immigrated to the United States due to Indonesian political and religious unrest. I was not thrilled at the fact that I had lost everything and forced to start over in a new unfamiliar country. Heck, I didn’t even know how to speak English.Â
Prisms and Sentiment (2013). Prisms and Sentiment are site-specific instillations with plastics and fabrics. In search of what I had missed for 13 years, I have decided to start from the beginning, from the childhood memory. To create works that are child-like without being childish. Through the Windgate Foundation Grant I was able to revisit Indonesia this past summer. Currently my works are inspired by the findings from that trip. http://www.chintiakirana.com
I realized, as I pondered numerous times in my studio, that my interest in the abandoned architecture was driven by its sentimental value. This discovery served as inspiration for my newer works
MFA Southern Illinois University BA
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2009 Auburn University in Montgomery, AL
Chintia Kirana, Prisms Installation, 2013
Chintia Kirana, Hidden, 43x60, charcoal and acrylic on paper
“In search of what I had missed for 13 years, I have decided to start from the beginning, from the childhood memory. To create works that are child-like without being childish.�
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previous page: Jerry Lyles, Campus Chapel Yard, 24 x 42, oil on canvas, 2010 above: Jerry Lyles, Oak Tree on Campus, 24 x 72, oil on canvas, 2011
Jerry Lyles My current work is based on an obser-
How does space impact our sense of identity and when that space is altered what is negotiated in order to retain a sense of self? Who determines what the face of the future will look like and for what reasons? What in our environments do we regard as being of value and how is that value communicated and transferred?
vational, referential reaction to my environment. I live in lower South Texas near the Texas/Mexican border in a community which has transitioned from what was formerly a largely agrarian area to a growing suburban one. My work largely deals with that experience. I am interested in the tension between space and our reaction to it.
These are some of the questions motivating my investigations.
The sense of place as well as the actual physical aspects of a location can have a profound impact on people as individuals and communities. People will often identify their geographic location as a part of their identity. I am a Texan, I am a Southerner, I am an American, etc‌ How is space used? Who determines its usage? When land is developed what is being gained and what is lost?
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Jerry Lyles, Summer Time, 62 x 86, oil on canvas, 2010
“The sense of place as well as the actual physical aspects of a location can have a profound impact on people as individuals and communities. People will often identify their geographic location as a part of their identity.�
MFA 2000 American University, Washington D.C. BFA
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1995, Kansas City Art Institute, MO
Erin Murray In my current work I am attempting to utilize multi-faceted or ambiguous symbols paired with figures to create a provocative narrative about society. Most of the work is rooted in personal narrative and attempts to find the connection between my own experiences and the narratives engrained in our public conscience. Although the driving force behind much of my work is the story-telling component, I’m enthralled by the dialogue between past and present and enjoy exploring ways to speak to the past through contemporary imagery and color. The bodies of work that I am currently focused on creating are “Voracious Appetites,” “When the Mystery Wears Off,” “Best Forgotten Disasters” and “BubbleWrapped World.” In “Voracious Appetites”, I am utilizing food and eating as symbols for the things we need, desire, and consume. More specifically I want the work to address overindulgence (in its many applications) and our inability to be satisfied with simplicity. In “When the Mystery Wears Off”, I am exploring the idea of expectation and idealization. Many of these works bring forward old imagery (primarily from the Italian Renaissance) and question the impracticality of the artifice we have come to accept. In “Best Forgotten Disasters,” I am embracing the mystery and fear of tragedy and the unknown or unexpected. Many of these works were actually based on personal experience
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and the all-encompassing state of disaster. Some of the work is closely related to “BubbleWrapped World” an imaginary world where Bubble-Wrap comes to represent our fears and the devices we contrive to create our own sense of identity. In “Bubble-Wrapped World” balloons become hope, blankets become safety, and the figures interact in a world where Bubble-Wrap fears may be the only things they can trust.
http://www.erinemurray.com MFA 2009 University of New Hampshire, Durham, NH BFA
2006 The College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, VA
Erin Murray, It's Never Enough, 32 x 32, oil on patterned fabric, 2012 Next Page: Erin Murray, Our Path Alone Together, 50 x 70, oil on canvas 2013 Erin Murray, Vaulting Practice, 48 x 56, oil on canvas, 2013
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Carmen Niichel, Traps, 5’x4’, acrylic on plexiglass, 2011
Carmen Niichel My work rejoices in doing violence to the mundane and to http://carmenniichel.com/ those things which are usually good, but sometimes seem tedious and restrictive: the various responsibilities and reMFA 2011 Indiana University quirements of day-to-day life. It runs after pleasure and pleasure’s difficulties: the pain which can be pleasure’s effects or BFA 2008 Lyme College of enhancers; the disasters of selfishness. There is a caution beFine Arts, CT hind the pleasure. I explore what happens when you trade one set of restrictions (the outside world) for another (the inside world), perhaps not accepting that restrictions of one kind or
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Carmen Niichel, Domestic, 48 x 48, acrylic on plexiglass, 2013
another are inescapable. Thus my paintings are places which hint at the destruction underlying their construction. Space is accordion folded or flattened, patterns are distorted, forms are sliced and diced by bars and stripes, and real objects are reduced to symbols. Blood, dead animals (or parts of them), predators, prey, and gory eating all warn of the possible results of self indulgence and erasing inhibitions. The girls in the paintings could
be animally innocent or calculatedly sadistic. Do they hunt and eat for the pleasure of satisfying hunger or the pleasure of cruelty? And what have they sacrificed, ignored, or forgotten for their pleasure?
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“My work rejoices in doing violence to the mundane and to those things which are usually good, but sometimes seem tedious and restrictive...�
“I seek imagery that creates communal moments, whether fabricated or authentic�
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previous page: Sara Pedigo, In This Light, 20 x 16, oil on canvas, 2013
Sara Pedigo “The longer I live the more I would like to put the world in suspension and grip the present before it’s eaten by the next second and becomes the past. A painting creates an illusion of an eternal present, a place where my eyes can rest as if the clock has magically stopped ticking”. – Siri Hustvedt Representational art mimics the world while not being bound to a physical singular experience. In my paintings, I use references that range from recently-taken photographs to borrowed and inherited family snapshots. My interest in creating these paintings is based on a strong attraction to the figure. I inherently see shared humanity present in the small gestures of body language. Images of people contain power that is based on lived experience. An image of someone squinting may cause oneself to momentarily recall the brightness of the sun. I seek imagery that creates communal moments, whether fabricated or authentic: in painting, I can
choose to collapse timelines and make hybrid spaces by combining several source photographs or just work from a singular image. I am enthralled by the material qualities of paint to create visual hierarchies. The malleability of paint to broadly suggest form significantly influences my approach to coloration and mark making decisions. Narrative elements drive these works as well as a desire to transform the mundane into the spectacular.
http://www.sarapedigo.com MFA 2007 University of Massachusetts in Amherst BA
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2003 Flagler College
above: Sara Pedigo, Gardenias for Our Hair, 24 x 24, oil on canvas, 2013 right: Sara Pedigo, The Routine, 24 x 20, oil on canvas, 2013
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Nicholas Scrimenti, Bruno’s, 43 x 39, oil and acrylic paper on panel, 2012
Nicholas Scrimenti My current body of work is derived from my experience being employed by a hoarder for over a year to help develop a strategy to clean and organize his property. To him, the endless piles of physical objects either contained a memory or possessed the potential to manifest itself into something new. The objects were in a sense a lifelong collage.
the accumulations within it have become integrated into my paintings. Often, each painting is derived from and loosely based on specific bizarre events and futile tasks I have encountered while working with the hoarder. The narrative is used as springboard into each painting and often dissolves partially or entirely through the process of painting. I routinely use computer processes as a way to change and manipulate my paintings in an attempt to organize while the painting evolves. The translation of digital media and effects into the medium of paint provides a tactile and visceral quality that cannot be matched by the sterile relationship between the viewer of a computer screen or printed photograph.
The paintings investigate the correlation between the process of creating art and the act of hoarding cleaning up a hoarders mess. When dealing with such an overwhelming amount of excess, decisions regarding what stays and what goes must be made quickly. These are hard decisions for the owner of the objects, or the composer of the painting.
http://www.nickscrimenti.com
Working with this subject matter has revealed my own hoarding tendencies in regards to my studio practice. I have become influenced by the array of art garbage that accumulates through my process of working. The environment I am surrounded by while painting, and
MFA BFA
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2012 University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati 2009 Miami University, Oxford, OH
Nicholas Scrimenti, Mary’s Toys, 34 x 43, oil and acrylic on panel, 2012 35
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Jessica Simorte My work is an ongoing examination of the relationship between place and space. It is undeniable that we are shaped by our surroundings and I feel this is particularly true in my case. At times I reconfigure personal experiences I have had with certain places in the past, recognizing memories’ flawed or enhanced qualities through abstraction. In other works, I source local and current spaces I inhabit in an effort to investigate the locations I dwell in, but rarely fully look at.
The result is a push and pull between currently occupied space and idealized or faulty memories of the past. Shapes, objects, and interior landscapes fill these works, often abstracted or simplified beyond recognition. By looking at interiors through the filter of materials and physicality, the work focuses on drawing and painting as a means of navigating space.
Jessica Simorte, 4 x 4, acrylic, marker and graphite on panel, 2013
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Jessica Simorte, Studio Landscape (Paper), 4 x 4, acrylic, ink and colored pencil on panel, 2013
http://jessicasimorte.com MFA 2013 University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH BFA
2010 University of Saint Mary, Leavenworth, KS
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Laura J. Stein, Blue and Cream, 11 x 15, collage, 2013
Laura J. Stein http://www.laurajstein.com BFA Cornell University
I like to paint with bits of paper, which is why collage is my medium. I choose to work from source material and do not use a copy machine or a computer in my work. I put down an outline with a pencil on watercolor paper. Mostly I use a ruled edge but sometimes I might do it in a fast and loose way with a drawing inside. Then I fill the space with cut or torn pieces of auction catalogs, grade school primers, old medical textbooks, and maps. Sometimes the picture comes together right away like a completed puzzle. More often though, I put several layers down, scraping here and inlaying there, until it looks right. I like to have a lot of materials around me, and then I make connections and figure out what I want to combine. I use scissors, a razor, and gel medium to paste and
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Laura J. Stein, Spring Color, 18 x 24, collage, 2013
attach and scrape away. I have a lot of pre-conceived ideas that become fluid and changeable according to whether things are working out or look right. The collage feels finished when I have created a true pattern with the proper balance of light.
“The collage feels finished when I have created a true pattern with the proper balance of light.�
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