Painted College Series-Early

Early Painted Collage Series

by Gerald King

This is a series of works I did while a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin. The modern university art departments has little patients for students who seek to follow in the footsteps of Raphael or Rubens. I was fortunate that the Pop Art movement was establishing some credibility with the art academy, and subject matter, which had been considered incidental or obstructive by the entrenched abstract expressionists, was ounce again allowed. Since I am an image maker, this allowed me a chance to develop and expand my own artistic repeteroire, and still fulfill the requirement of the university. For this purpose I used a cubist compositional device known as 'collage' By juxtaposing images which had little regard for natural spatial relationships or scale I was able to produce paintings which , though vary realistically rendered, came off as quite abstract and flat. By softening edges and melting forms together, many of the works take on a surrealistic look.

#154 "Pencil Sharpener" #159"Mealtime" U.S.A.