Back to Gallery Mixed Media
Canadian philosopher Marshall McLuhan perhaps said it best when he stated, "the medium is the message." The medium chosen by an artist greatly impacts the resulting artwork, particularly when different media are successfully combined. A good example is Ashley Wilkinson's Bottled Lightning, where blue accents emphasize portions of the work. Media can be used to define depth, hue, realism, texture or value. For example, Chalk pastel or watercolour paint give pieces a light and airy quality, while oil paints or conté crayons often give a work vibrancy.
Collage is a distinctive category of mixed media created by superimposing materials onto a surface. Collage was first introduced in 1912 by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque and is present in many artistic genres including Surrealism, Dadaism and Pop Art. The media chosen for a collage often provides its own symbolic element to the piece. Rebecca Mumford's collage, Rebecca's World, uses many different pieces of media including flower petals, photographs and shards of glass from a broken mirror. The mirror symbolizes the reflection of the artist's life, which can be seen in many different ways depending on the way each piece reflects that life.
With the combination of media and the introduction of found objects, an infinite number of possibilities are available to the artist.
Sara Caissie
