Colin Talcroft

Collage website

 

About the artist

 

A self-taught artist active in a range of media, including drawing, printmaking, collage, and photography. Born in New York City in 1960, Talcroft showed an interest in photography from the age of eight and began drawing at an earlier age. Figure drawing has been a life-long interest, and the nude has figured prominently in his photographic work. In the realm of abstract art, Talcroft has worked extensively as a printmaker and more recently in collage using painted paper and mono-printed elements. His printmaking has included traditional techniques such as etching and woodblock printing, but many of his prints use methods of his own—for example, printing from corrugated board and from found objects such as twine, bubble plastic, and paper cutouts. 

 

His work is in private collections in the US and Japan, including the permanent collection of Imagery Estate Winery. Gallery shows of his printmaking have included solo shows at Suikatou, in Tokyo (1995), at Suikatou again (1996), and at Mominoki Gallery, also in Tokyo (1997). His photography has been shown at The Canvas Gallery, in San Francisco (2006). Photographic works have been published in Naked, Feierabend Press, Germany (2004) and in Nudes 3: The Best of International Nude Photography, Feierabend Unique Books, Germany (2012). Collage works were included in the Small Works Show at Gallery 1337, in San Rafael, in 2013; in a solo show at The Spinster Sisters, in Santa Rosa, CA, in 2015; in group shows at The Sebastopol Center for the Arts; in Collage/Assemblage, a juried show at the O’Hanlon Center for the Arts, in Mill Valley, CA, in 2016; and in Reflections/Shadows, a juried show at the Healdsburg Center for the arts, in 2016. Talcroft has been a Sonoma County Art Trails artist since 2014. Talcroft is the creator of Serendipitous Art, a blog that collects examples of unintended art he finds in daily life (http://serendipitousart.blogspot.com). Talcroft has lived in Santa Rosa, California since 2000. 

 

Artist’s statement

 

I have worked in many media—drawing, painting, printmaking, and, most recently, collage. What these media have in common is problems of composition. What I enjoy most about making art is tackling those problems. I find it deeply satisfying to create order out of disorder—whether I do that using a camera’s viewfinder to frame a scene or by laying out scraps of paper, cutting them, arranging them, and pasting them together gain in a way that is visually arresting. I find it wonderful and stimulating that there appear to be infinite solutions to the basic problems of composition.