By Andrea Moreau
Located in Hudson, NY
Poland (Glider) by Andrea Moreau
colored pencil and postage stamp on paper
22 x 30 inches
25.25 x 32.5 inches framed
To create her mixed-media artworks, Andrea Moreau selects a postage stamp to serve as the starting point for a piece on paper, then “completes” the image with colored pencil. This artwork, "Poland (Glider)," centers on a stamp that depicts an aircraft flying above a glacial horizon. Building on the style and environment established by the stamp art, Moreau extended this scene across land and sea in vibrant blue pencil.
A statement by the artist:
My drawings function as personal interpretations of political or commercial propaganda. I begin with imagery found on postage stamps or printed advertisements and, using the visual logic and graphic language of the image, I attempt to tease out a larger framework from which to consider it. Finished pieces often incorporate printed matter and cultural detritus, which gives them an immediate and tactile connection to the world of objects.
I am particularly interested in the postage stamp as a geographical artifact, and through my drawing process I attempt to learn something about a place by studying its official imagery and then creating a world beyond the borders of its fragmentary scenes. The finished drawings and paintings are a record of this study; they are a dialogue between the printed and the drawn, the official and the personal, the real and the imaginary. They are a metaphor for the way in which we conjure the places we hear about on the news and read about in books, using the tiniest pieces of information to construct a reality that most likely bears little resemblance to any actual place.
Andrea Moreau’s mixed-media works, on the other hand, walk a tightrope between context and isolation. Moreau selects a postage stamp to serve as the starting point for a piece on paper, then “completes” the image with colored pencil. These stamps may become lost in a frenzy of Moreau’s mark-making, as with “Mexico (Flowers) #15,” or left comically obvious, like in “USA (Barbershop...
Category
2010s Contemporary Art by Medium: Color Pencil
MaterialsPaper, Color Pencil
