My use of color and texture in my work is different from many artists involved with any type of digital process. I do not use color or texture filters, but rather actual photographs to create compositions.
My process begins when I take photographs – focusing on people who I pose in various positions, mannequins, signs, train cars, graffiti, urban walls, newspaper boxes, cracks in wooden walls, metal, worn and weathered painted walls, as well as old maps, and other Americana ephemera that I find on my travels. Close-up shots are usually done using a tripod and cable release for quality and clarity.
The colors in all of my photographs originate from my subjects. Numbers and rust often derive from train cars; letters and words come from signs and graffiti, torn paper and pieces of posters are from exterior poster walls.
After developing the images from raw digital files, I alter a specific image to black-and- white, and then begins a process of cut and paste that I have developed, using multiple images of close-ups of paint, followed by photographs of signs. Numerous other photos are added and overlapped. Although I have used as few as 50 images to create simple images, often 200 or more photographs are used in this process