Collage Artist Research - Val Britton
'Weights and Measures #1' - 2018; ink, acrylic, collage and hand cut paper.
'Ou Ongoing Excavation' - 2007; ink, collage and embroidery on paper.
'Net #19' - 2019; acrylic, ink, collage and cut out paper.
'Under Cover of Stars' - 2016; graphite, ink, and collage on paper.
Val Britton is an American artist, born in 1977. Her works are heavily linked to her affinity towards cartography. Her work takes on her own personal view of how constellations appear, the highways and even open roads. In previous interviews, sheโs also said that a huge inspiration towards her visual language in her works, was her fatherโs death. Sheโs stated she had a longing to be close to her father, as he was a truck driver constantly away on jobs. When she was a teen, her father passed away, this caught her off guard, leaving her to struggle with the mess of emotions and not knowing how to deal with them. This influencing her to experiment and find what way was best to express herself. Using this abstract sense of mapping, as a metaphor for physical space, as well as emotional and phycological. Her pieces may seem messy, but thereโs an underlying story to each one.ย
In these collages, Britton combines various methods to express herself. Like splattering ink, blowing the ink around the page so it leaves long geometric lines, cutting out geometric shapes and various other shapes to pare them together. There is a clear contrast in each, whether is be the colours, shapes or textures. I particularly like the second example, I find the embroidery interesting and a nice contrast to the more 2D areas. Each piece is a collection of techniques, all intertwined to mould a story.ย
