Artist of the Month

Picnic by Corinne Geertsen
Picnic


Corinne Geertsen took a Photoshop class in 2007 with the intent of restoring old photographs, but taking that class placed her on a completely different path.

“A few weeks into the class, I began seeing the people in my photos as characters in dramas” Geertsen says. “I’ve been working digitally ever since.”

As a digital photo collage artist, Geertsen fuses old family photographs from the late 19th and early 20th centuries with her own pictures. Often, Geertsen creates a painting, photographs it and then adds to it digitally. She prints them herself in small editions on archival photo paper with archival inks.

“Working digitally dovetails nicely with the way I think,” says Geertsen, who earned an MFA in drawing and painting from Brigham Young University. “Objects can be swapped out to send the meaning of a picture down a different track. By combining disparate elements, I can call up all sorts of symbolism, storytelling and mischief.”

Her pictures are quirky, visual narratives about psychological situations. They lean toward surrealism, as they have odd juxtapositions, non sequiturs and an element of surprise.  Her works are on display at the Vision Gallery, 10 E. Chicago Street in Chandler through Jan. 28, 2012.

“I see a lot of humor in the nature of life, and I put that into the pictures as well, ” she says. “They resonate on a range of levels, from personal experience to world events. There are no limits.”

Clouded by Corinne Geertsen

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