Artist Statement
I find the process of collage to be very intuitive. In 1987, I started painting on small 4” x 6” hard canvases with a limited color palette. The small works were expressive and impressionistic most notably of the Williamsburg Bank in Brooklyn, NY. Over the course of 30 years the work has transformed from the small canvases into larger pieces with layers of paper collage (recycling packing paper and tissues and newspaper clippings of text), with layers of acrylic paints and ink washes.
The works have always drawn from printed media starting with the New York Times Book Review section (for text). The last 10 years have included exploring three-dimensional, layered, shadowbox Collage-scapes drawing from both old and current sources for visual information but also including newspaper text, a staple of my collage work since the late 1980’s. These smaller works presented layers or snapshots into visual assemblages and what I termed Collage-Scapes or collage landscapes presented almost as dioramas of moments of experience; that have been described as “wistful.” The Collage-Scapes often juxtaposed Modern and period imagery including humans, nature and architecture. The daily human experience was explored through snapshots of reality, memory, nostalgia, faith and vision. The work invited you, the viewer, to contemplate the inherent contradictions in Modern life, reflecting on your own experiences and landscapes; contexts.
As the collages have matured and evolved, common themes continue to be represented in both large canvases and smaller panels. Other artists and viewers often inquire “what kind of artist are you?” An article written for “These Kids Today” a solo exhibition in 2015, described my work in the spirit of Dadaism. I was always inspired by the connection of art and architecture and architects who were described as artists. Modern life’s inherent contradictions as to how human beings interact and incorporate technology beg to question the role of history in advancement. What often are overlooked in Modern life are the basic tools to navigate human life that Derrida, Heidegger, and Maslow outlined in their theses. I use the foundation of Dada as a construct to question through my art. The works presented in the 2018 show “Carry On” were a complex collection of collage works that illuminate everyday experiences of love, betrayal, homesickness and exile, through the lens by which we experience Modern life. “Carrying On” is a metaphor to navigate the prism of life, in the presence of the greatest gradations between ecstasies and griefs.
The process of working on the large canvases involves stapling rolled canvas to a large, vertical wall surface, demarcating the bounds or size and then performing an initial mapping with a charcoal stick. The mapping is used more to engage the blank canvas (especially if starting a piece without a prepared sketch). When working on small panel works, they lay flat on a worktable.
The process, seen in large canvases and small panels, follows a similar process but involves extensive time searching for subjects in books and other printed materials often found at public library books sales and newspapers. The culling and cutting processes are reflective, quiet, and careful and where a significant portion of the initial editing takes place. The process to organize compositions, address perspective and light and shadow composed as 2D layers with 3D effect, develops scenes and landscapes that often have a social message or speak to the nostalgic juxtaposed with the Modern that are often described as wistful.
The intervention on the canvas or panels begins deliberately then quickly follows more intuitive compositions and the relationships of the ideas and ‘characters’ – defining a narrative of interwoven or juxtaposed narratives. The works develop frequently by an initial idea that grows out of spread out clippings of text and images cultivated over time and laid out on a surface. Most of the applied materials used in the works are kept in boxes often sorted by size, type, color, periods and landscapes, or sometimes by source, along with newspaper clippings of words and phrases that are also accumulated over time. The text is revealing and meaningful to each work. Humanistic faces and formal shapes are often visible in the more abstract works.
The triptych comprised of the paintings, “Goodbye Milky Way”, Sitting on the Moon” and “Where are you” chronicles an angel’s fall from the heavens to Earth. “Goodbye Milk Way” illustrates a winged figure in the heavens, descending or starting to fall in the wake of betrayal, with text that reads on one arm “saying of the Oracle, School for Life”, “Awake”; and on the other “someone to change the world”, “tomorrow’s work,” “the too difficult problem.” In “Sitting on the Moon” the falling angel comes more into to focus with wings that no longer support flight surrounded by scenes from history and text, “the odds of redemption”, landscapes, and those that can only watch what unfolds before them with text that reads, “Life’s like that.” In the final painting, “Where are you?” a wingless figure, now human again. Instead of lying prone in humility or adoration to a deity, the now fallen angel looks back to the heavens, watched upon by angels (from historical New England gravestones) and a mourning angel in black. The landscape is abstract, conflicted and contradictory.
The works on smaller collage on panels reveal common themes of societal ills and contradictions, history intertwined with the present, challenges of Modern life, and juxtaposed faith with diverse peoples. A panel triptych titled “Red, Yellow and Blue” speaks to when my daughter once left a phone message asking how you make those colors. In the triptych, the “Red” panel, the text “A dream out of reach that once seemed their birth right” identifies social and economic inequities prevalent in Modern life. “Yellow” illustrates diverse peoples, cultures, and faiths rejoicing and interdependent. “Blue” juxtaposes images of ‘real life’ with societal ideals. The remaining panels composed as an assemblage could be viewed as the products of a Modern color wheel.
David Michael Lieb, 2019
Purchase / Acquisition
If you are interested in purchasing original artwork from LIEBSTUDIOS please contact the studio. Appointments may be scheduled to view original pieces.
Large format works are typically mounted on museum quality stretcher bar systems with a profile of 1 1/2” to
1 3/4”, with no additional frame.
Smaller works may be purchased with a black floating frame (Blick) or without.
The studio can accept credit card payments through Square with an additional 3% charge for processing.
Shipping is not included in the price of listed works. Small works can be shipped via FedEx from the studio. Purchasers would need to make arrangements for pick-up of large works, special packaging or crating for shipping by their shipping company.