ARTIST STATEMENT
I consider myself both a collage artist and a storyteller. Sometimes my work is a short story, sometimes it’s a novel. But it’s always surreal, full of observations about the absurdity of daily life or conversations with the cities I’ve lived in, visited and loved.
My practice grew from my love of making photo collages in my former newspaper career as a graphic artist – only now I do this by hand, using my own photos combined with historical images and paper in a dreamlike form of narrative. The ability to layer these images with colours and textures, historical maps, newsprint and found items inspires me to create multi-layered landscapes of both fiction and history. I love to work with the bizarre, the comical, the outlandish – while working, I always keep the words of an artist who inspires me, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, in the back of my mind: “You can do anything. Nothing is forbidden.”
ARTIST BIO
Ginger Sedlářová is a collage artist, painter and photographer who worked as a graphic artist for decades in both daily media in Vancouver and on newspapers and magazines in Central Europe. Prague, Czech Republic is her second home. Her former career inspired her love of working with photos and composition, but now that she doesn’t have an editor looking over her shoulder while she works, she loves to play and indulge in surrealism. A hard-core Beatlemaniac, Sedlářová’s work has appeared in galleries across Canada and in the United States and Europe.
Let Me See Your Beauty Broken Down
From the series One Of Us Cannot Be Wrong, monochromes and reds, architecture and flowers, a stroll alongside Leonard Cohen. Collage and acrylic on 8"x10" wood gallery panel, inset into 12"x16" wood panel. "Take this longing from my tongue, all the useless things my hands have done..."
The Stories Of The Street Are Mine
From the series One Of Us Cannot Be Wrong, monochromes and reds, architecture and flowers, a stroll alongside Leonard Cohen. Collage and acrylic on 8"x10" wood gallery panel, inset into 12"x16" wood panel. "And where do all these highways go, now that we are free?"
They Sentenced Me To 20 Years of Boredom
From the series One Of Us Cannot Be Wrong, monochromes and reds, architecture and flowers, a stroll alongside Leonard Cohen. Collage and acrylic on 8"x10" wood gallery panel, inset into 12"x16" wood panel. "I'm coming now, I'm coming to reward them."
Ultrasound
From the series The Scream, a homage in title to the great Norwegian painter Edvard Munch. Collage and watercolour on 12”x16” wood panel. Wild-eyed film noir panic with splashes of watercolour and more than a touch of surrealism. “Your face encompasses the beauty of the whole earth. Your lips, as red as ripening fruit, gently part as if in pain.” – Edvard Munch
Darling, Can't You Hear Me?
From the series The Scream, a homage in title to the great Norwegian painter Edvard Munch. Colours, shapes and hysteria in noisy discord. Collage and watercolour on 12”x16” wood panel. Uncontainable colours and shapes, splashes of watercolour pigment. “A work of art comes only from inside a human being.” – Edvard Munch