Matt D McCarthy

An image that I may use as a basis for a larger painting or collage.

Simple graphic variations on a theme, effectively ‘Photoshop’ collages  created to help me move things around in order to realise composition, colour gamuts and so on. I find ‘Photoshop’  an invaluable tool for collage and composition, especially when working with assemblages containing objects. Moving and layering things in the ‘real world’ can be time consuming and extremely frustrating.

This is still a work in progress, mainly due to financial constraints. It is based on the eponymous song title from the  ’Bonzo Dog Band’s’  album, ‘The Doughnut in Granny’s Greenhouse’.

The finished assemblage will be my peculiar visualisation of suburban living; sometimes it looks like heaven, at other times, hell.

CAD manipulated photograph for possible use as a painting.

CAD manipulated photograph for possible use as a painting.

CAD manipulated photograph for possible use as a painting.

One of many guitar photographs manipulated

for possible future use as a painting.

“Brown study-  a mood of brooding or thoughtfulness” (Brewer’a Dictionary of Phrase & Fable)

Found, lost and discarded objects; the power of objects to evoke a sense of past lives.

Mixed media. Found objects, felted wool and driftwood.
This assemblage is inspired by the work of Joseph Cornel. The ‘shed’ part of the title is ambiguous, referring to physical loss, but also to place, the idea of a gloomy shearing-shed or outbuilding where things are stored away, consequently forgotten or lost for ever. For the magpie artist, old outbuildings can be a source of many interesting materials and objects.  The sheep-shears were rescued from a tool chest in an old shed I helped clear many years ago; they are in a hand sewn leather holster bearing the inscription ‘Thomas Moss’, Coberl (sic) and the date 1800. ‘Coberl’ may be a misspelling of ‘cobbler’. Read the rest of this entry »

Muslin reworking of original plaster carved block.