WORLD AS COLLAGE – DAY 8

 

Hello All and welcome back to my studio!

THE SHORT TAKE:
Collage work continues, I’m staying ahead of myself, already beginning on the twelfth piece. The sun shines, tomorrow the snow will melt, the war escalates. I awaken at five am, thinking about these things.

So here again are a few new images for your viewing pleasure: World as Collage Day 8 – Recto & Verso. No digital manipulations today, nor music. On the other hand, I decided to share some images of the works of Ernő Károlyi, a Hungarian painter and collage artist, and a colleague from the past. See THE LONG READ below.

 

 

THE LONG READ:
The colors come effortlessly, as do the large shapes. Like broad brush strokes when starting painting, these bones of the collage gather themselves together on the worktable, stand up and announce their presence!

The second level of work focuses on composition, slowing down a bit to watch the balance and movement of the developing piece, keeping track of what reveals itself on both recto and verso since this is a single-layered but double-sided construction! At this point I do a lot of looking at the developing form as whole, particularly paying attention to the form’s outer edges.

The last level of work is fine-tuning the balance of the composition by spending a fair amount of time moving and shifting smaller pieces around – the small shapes yielding details of texture, color and tonality that pull the whole work together. When all the elements are in the right position, they converse perfectly!

Sometimes it comes together quickly, other times the process requires many pauses, when I move to something else and return with a fresh eye to judge the assemblage before it’s all glued together.

Now I’d like to share some images of works by my Hungarian colleague ERNŐ KÁROLYI, sadly no longer with us although his work remains in his stead.

A powerful painter working simultaneously with landscape and non-representational compositions, he also did marvelous collages. Later in life, he turned to large-scale fabric collages. He continued to work on both painting and collage simultaneously, often using collages as the starting point for a painting. Here are some images of Ernő at work in his studio. His work can also be seen on the website of the KÖRMENDI GALLERY in Budapest that still handles his work.

 

 

 

 

Thinking of all my art colleagues in Hungary, Poland and especially in Ukraine. I am in touch with many Hungarian friends on a regular basis. There is currently an enormous Hungarian mobilization of aid for all the refugees flooding across the Ukrainian border into Hungary. I tried to make contact with a few colleagues from Ukraine, including VITALYI PRIZANT from Kyiv whom I met over twenty years ago at an artists’ colony in Hungary, but haven’t heard back. The men must be fighting, the women, fleeing… I think about their artwork, their studios … and their lives.

 

– Diane Sophrin
  Montpelier, Vermont
  March 5, 2022