"Beloved Words, Thoughts, Deeds...", ©Adrienne Fritze, All RIghts Reserved. Medium :: Torn newspaper collage from an original photo taken by the artist.
The Artist's Idea, Why and How if It
This portrait is of my Beloved, Mark, and was one of several dozen camera phone shots I took of him on a particular Friday morning shortly after he got up and perched himself on our bed with his electronic tablet. The shots were from many angles, some close-ups, others captured his upper body, others focusing on parts of his body—hands, chest, neck and shoulder, etc.
In the end, the shot I loved the most was from my view of my Beloved from my pillow with he against the flood of our bedroom light. The way the light invaded my view of his face reminded me of the pictorial images by Alfred Stieglitz, a process called open value, and lent itself to a decidedly romantic interpretation of our circumstance, whereas the other images revealed a more intimate context.
In the re-rendered portrait—a newsprint collage—I used the same shot and included more of Mark’s lower face to create a more complete physical presence alongside the ethereal impact of the light in the background.
The tight shot of his face with the partial halo blurring the details takes on two separate meanings in the paired art forms. In the first, the photo, it is a more romantic rendition of who this man is for me.
However, in the second artwork, the newsprint collage, I chose to limit myself to three types of images from the newspaper—articles with the type set in different densities and against different backgrounds, the different grey hues and values of photographs in the articles and advertisements, and for his moustache and beard I used an image of water from an ad for a luxury cruise.
These elements are significant in this portrait of Mark as he is a writer, photographer and social chameleon.
Most of the paper is torn, however I did cut the bits for his eyes and some of the construction of his right cheekbone and nose to give the work a more defined line in those areas of particular importance to me.
