26 Strange Collage Artworks By Dan Barry

“In March of 2020, all of my upcoming exhibitions were canceled or indefinitely postponed within one week. That same week, I started “staying home” nearly full-time for the next 12+ months. I had no approaching deadlines and even more time on my hands to spend working in the studio. I began looking through my flat file drawers of paper and rediscovered a collection of hand-colored botanical prints that I had not thought about for a long time. The botanicals are from bound volumes of Paxton’s Magazine of Botany from the 1840s.”

“I set the stack on my work table and began to draw, collage, and build up a history of marks on them. It was a liberating way for me to get going once again in the studio. Over the following months, these meanderings resulted as a chronicle of my days, thoughts, and reactions to the world around me: widening national ideological divide, lies and conspiracy theories, racism and xenophobia, sickness, disease, death, aging and mortality, uncertainty, fear of a dystopian future.”

“As well as – a large amount of damage to my home and studio, caused by unprecedented, sustained winter weather in Texas and the failure of its vulnerable and neglected power grid.”

Below are some examples of the artist’s works in this series and other related works from “The Florist & Garden Miscellany.” You can find more at the website linked above.