| Karen Coill
Through my assemblages I express my facination with color, texture and form
while they, in turn, nurture my intrigue with connecting our past with the present. I am drawn to vintage magazines, textiles and wall coverings, graffitti and mid-century advertising, graphics and design. The inherant qualities of these chosen materials endlessly captivate me. For example, the translucency, and the frayed edges of aging fabrics, handmade
papers and periodicals, creates an almost subliminal allegory beneath the surface composition. As I veil the imagery, one over the other, the underlying patterns develope a new story, sometimes related, other times not, to the conscious, intended narrative. I work the materials with obsessive and repetitive methods...tearing, gluing, layering, painting, cutting and slicing...as if to wound and heal the skin as I smooth and wrinkle it, often taking it apart and putting it back together. The painted, the printed and the salvaged, when wrapped, layered and distressed,
suggest the passage of time and the recollection of memory. My imagery often seems familiar yet peculiar, as if to exist simultaneously, again, in the past and present. I chose the square for not only the contained, orderly appeal of the form itself,
but also because the geometry reclaims an intimate foundation providing a window, to peer into and look out of as well.
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