Ken Bishop

I feel liberated when working with my hands because I can be a thief. The rigors of daily life oblige us to be practical as we make a living for ourselves and support those we love. But as an artist I get to set aside these everyday guardrails to pickpocket, requisition or borrow the objects and ideas of our world, recombine and reuse them to stitch together my own compositions and conjure new stories.

Mixed media is the vehicle that I use to get the job done, improvising with watercolor, acrylic, wood, plastic, image transfer, metal, rope, and more. The process often starts with a painting, sketch or photograph, I augment it with digital layers then print, mount, build up with objects, materials and more paint. Other times, I imagine creative possibilities found in a simple artifact like a computer chassis and I conjure a story from that simple inspiration.

I think of my work as combining preexisting objects, materials and images in new ways, cobbling together what is at hand regardless of original purpose through fiddling, tinkering, doctoring, ideally in devious or crafty ways. I get to invent new meaning through creative mischief using collage and that is uplifting.