Fjord by Birgit Gerritsen

My DREAMSCAPES are formed by dreams, thoughts and the visual information fired at us daily through all kinds of media.
They are created in my 'visual diary' on large paper or on canvas using mixed media: collage technique, by painting and drawing with pastel crayons. Textures, structures and layers emerge, it is an organic process.
The landscapes grow through layers of images, shapes and structures from the visual material I come across through different media.
I use photos'of film and TV stills, images and texts from magazines and newspapers, as well as plastic rubbish and organic material I find.
As a visually oriented person, I am both stimulated and overstimulated by visual pollution and feel the need to process, transform and translate this bulk of visual information and materials I find into a dreamscape.
In my earlier work, figures played the main role, but more and more collages take the form of landscapes that become more abstract and the figures disappear into the background merge into larger shapes and these shapes merge with each other.
The visual information is like leaves swirling down and composting into earth from which new life grows. The layering is like the layering of experiences, of an 'emotional landscape'.
It is a personal, logical and natural process. An exploration of experimenting with shapes, materials and techniques, where the shaping and the story I want to tell reinforce each other.

'Fjord' I created in 2018 and is constructed with a few layers and with different materials.
It is a collage of mixed media: pieces of magazine, bits of crumpled newspaper, acrylic paint, epoxy, dried flowers and plastic waste. The inspiration was a rugged Norwegian landscape from a Netflix series with ice and snow.