Andrea Moreau Landscape Drawings and Watercolors

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...

Detailed sky blue colored pencil landscape drawing of postage stamp with red plane 'Republique du Congo (Wind)' made by Andrea Moreau in 2012 ...

Tunisia, Red Trees: Colored Pencil Drawing & Unique Stamp by Andrea Moreau colored pencil and postage stamp on paper 11 x 11 inches 15 x 15 inches framed Artist Statement: My drawin...