George Vitorovich

Artists Statement:

I first saw illustrations using collage and drawing in a children’s book from Europe. They had a dreamlike authenticity that seemed to evoke memories both strange and familiar. It is this sense of half-remembered story that I try to rediscover intuitively.

Wherever I go, I keep an eye out for some narrative element that I can incorporate into a story fragment. I have been taking reference photos with this in mind since the early ‘90’s. I depict a landscape in transition, where the ebb and flow of decline and renewal create a theatre of cycles. As the remnants of one stage become the beginning of another, a timeless rhythm suggests an ancient procession.

In the quiet along the edges of town this dynamic plays itself out. Landmarks are lost in the undergrowth and transformed into fading monuments. Their transience underscores a sacred undercurrent that is less elusive in the surrounding stillness.

I begin each piece by hand cutting and pasting up to sixty photo fragments to create each composite image. I then complete the image with extensive drawing, threading in subtle details and reconciling the composition, sometimes reworking it over a period of months. These images are printed digitally, allowing me to incorporate a variety of mediums including watercolor and oil pigments, as well as relief elements like dental plaster.

My early years were spent in New York City, where amid the urban surroundings my family kept a strong connection to the old country. My father was a relatively new immigrant and was full of old stories that fascinated me and gave the city an aura of hidden mystery. By day it was the bustle of a busy neighborhood; but late at night, during one of his stories, there was the haunting sense that something older still lingered within the city’s deepest recesses.

These impressions were of a place much older than the city around me. On some dream level, it seemed that the “old country” referred to some unseen part of the city, much older and now forgotten. This was never real enough to be a question, just a faint glimmer. Although, I remember secretly thinking while walking with my grandfather, that a certain strange looking side street might offer some answers.

  



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