Geoff Allan Collage Artist

New Year objectives..

2012-01-17T13:53:00.000-08:00

2011-12-17T05:15:00.000-08:00

christmas roundup

2011-10-20T08:35:00.003-07:00

blah

A succession of 40th birthday's

2011-08-12T05:02:00.001-07:00

Struan (April 2010)

Johnie (Sept 2010)

Nick (June 2012) (!)

Doug (Sept 2011)

These pictures are self-commissioned works for friend's who are tiptoing towards or have tumbled over that significant milestone

New departures

2011-06-11T03:34:00.000-07:00

Unfortunately I haven't had enough time in the last couple of months to sit down and do the hard yards necessary to complete my latest landscape series...However, I have been messing about with a new, totally divergent concept, overlaying images I have archived over the years to produce a set of pictures which i hope create some interesting juxtapositions.
Many more in the pipeline...

Past, Present and future (2011)

Backroom entourage (2011)

Common Currency (2011)

as yet untitled

February is the new January

2011-02-14T04:33:00.000-08:00

Finally had my first proper creative week of the year...this new picture has the working title 'setting moon' and is the first of a new series of landscapes which I'm planning to complete by the summer.

studio sublet

2010-11-06T02:14:00.001-07:00

Unfortunately I have had to sublet my studio space at Coburg House. However, I hope to retain a presence in the collective, and plan to exhibit at least a couple of pictures at the Christmas open studios. It's a shame to leave the place, but my financial position is such that its become a luxury I can't afford. I will continue to work from home and see what happens in the new year.

Another studio weekend floats by

2010-08-27T06:18:00.000-07:00

Summer Open Studios at Coburg House

2010-07-09T03:34:00.000-07:00

Hi,
just wanted to flag up our summer open studios event which is taking place over the weekend of the 6th to the 8th of August......it would be great if you could make it along...

I will be exhibiting a new mounted landscape original in the main gallery space and also three different limited edition print versions upstairs in my studio....

West Coast Voyage (66 x 24cm)
photo collage on mounting board

overlapped squares version

abstracted version

New landscape commission

2010-02-17T02:11:00.001-08:00

For the last month I have been labouring over a new landscape that is finally ready to be mounted. Its been a slow process (as ever), partly because I've been learning how compose the picture within the parallel virtual world that is photoshop. Basically I have worked out how to mimick what I have previously done with paper and a scalpel, knowing that if I could master the technique it would open up many more possibilities in terms of picture construction and printing. And somewhere along the line it has all come together, and I'm pretty excited about the next series of landscapes which I'm already working on.

Landscape 4.5: The last of the light

and if your interested in the picture development and the photoshop possibilities...

picture outline

in progress...

mirror image

and instant New Zealand Fjordland...(!)

coburg house christmas open studios

2009-12-23T03:29:00.000-08:00

just before the preview of christmas open studios at Coburg House...don't have any other pictures of the weekend, it all got a bit blurry very quickly...

Retrospective at Coburg House

2009-10-27T09:39:00.000-07:00

In December as part of the Christmas Open Studios at Coburg House, I will be shuffling together a retrospective of my work to date. I am celebrating my 40th birthday so have decided to put on a bit of a show. The Open Studios event runs from Friday 4th to Sunday 6th December 11am - 5pm, with a 'retro' preview from 6 - 9pm on the Friday night. In addition the gallery at the front of the studio complex will be open on the following two weekends leading up to Christmas....

Preview Evening

2009-08-24T09:14:00.000-07:00

Can I say a big thank you to everybody who turned up at the open studios preview evening at Coburg House...the whole weekend was a great success, I sold a few prints, and got a couple of commissions....

nervous before the start of the event

with Chris Minty, who organised by trip to Belize : )

doing the chat

in full flow

Coburg House Open Studios

2009-07-17T07:03:00.001-07:00

Just wanted to flag up this is event which I'm contributing to....

Many Thanks

2009-05-06T03:38:00.000-07:00

Finally got round to tidying up my travel diary and putting some thought into this new latest news blog. This year has got off to a flying start with a very successful trip to Belize and the prospect of an exhibition back here in the UK at some point. I hope this next bit doesn't sound too much like a speech but I would like to take this opportunity to thank everybody who helped me to make my trip one such a memorable one: especially Chris Minty, who set up the Artist in Residence; Vicki, Cat, Dave and all the staff at Pooks Hill Jungle Lodge for their help and support, (and for tolerating my more sarcastic moments;) Chapal and Lenny Gentle for their expert advice and generous donation of photographs for the exhibition I held in Belize; and Alex Tilley for providing an opportunity to spent time out on Glovers Reef and 'lending' me his archive of underwater pictures.

My other news is that I have been fortunate enough to acquire a studio space at the newly refurbished Coburg House Studios in Leith. I haven't actually spent much time there yet, but its great to think that I now have an proper working environment to slope off too, rather than sitting at my dinning room table staring out of the window and wondering what is on daytime tv.

The previous two entries contain a record of the pictures that I've completed in the six months, starting with the stuff from Belize, and a brief explanation about picture construction and the material used for each piece (yawn, yawn)...

Local Colour

2009-05-01T02:33:00.001-07:00

Local Colour (2009) Exterior House Paint Colours of Belize
photo-collage on mounting board

This picture was inspired by the vibrant combination of house paint colours which are a distinctive feature of many buildings in Belize, a few examples of which are shown below....

Templates for New Pictures 2009

2009-04-24T09:29:00.000-07:00

The style of four of the pictures I made in Belize were influenced by the template used for a recent magazine cover design. This commission was completed a few weeks before I took off on my travels. The simple format of juxapositioned squares can be cropped and sized very easily in photoshop, a tool I'm increasingly using in my work this year. Almost all the material I accumulated while in Belize was collected on a digital camera, and adjusted on the computer. However I have resolved that all the originals I create will still be printed out and framed on mounting board.

Cover design for the January 2009 Issue of the Society of Human Resources Magazine

the resulting original ....Multicultural Faces (2009)
photo-collage on mounting board

Below are the four pictures created in Belize which follow a similar format....

Green Shoots (2009) photo-collage on mounting board

Bark Study (2009) photo-collage on mounting board
photo credit for one square: Lenny Gentle

Abstract Lichen (2009) photo-collage on mounting board

Coral Study (2009) photo-collage on mounting board
photo credit: Alex Tilley

Edinburgh Festival: Pairs and Affairs (2008)

2008-12-11T12:08:00.000-08:00

The brief for this picture was to explore an alternative way of summarising the experience of visiting the Edinburgh Festival, using the advertising posters and flyers with which the city is awash every August. I hit upon the idea of spelling out an interior message or story hidden within the assemblage, and what emerged was a narrative about a doomed festival affair. Don't ask me about my state of mind at the time, it was just the most obvious dialogue that presented itself while I was sorting through the piles of paper I amassed in the first week of the fringe. What also caught my eye was the number of pairs of posters which had similiar designs or themes. So I collected them together and positioned them across the final artwork, so that the pairs mirrored each other with as much space between the nominated squares as possible. The intention of the piece is to provoke thought about the process of attaching associations to what are essentially very disparate pieces of advertising, and on a more prosaic level, instigate a game of trying to pick out the matching pairs given a few clues......

Edinburgh Festival: Pairs and Affairs (2008)
printed material on mounting board (350 x 470 mm)

some of the squares which explain the basic narrative....

and a few of the pairs....