Fine art artist Derek Gores was born in 1971 in New York. In his early childhood his dad influenced him and they would draw streams and staircases together. More recently he has been influenced by Max Ernst’s surreal collages as well as by people outside art such as Neil Young and Bruce Springsteen. He graduated at The Rhode Island School of Design and worked in Melbourne, Florida both exhibiting and curating. He is well known for creating collage portraits on canvas using ripped paper from recycled magazine pages and other parts he finds. Gore mainly works on canvas size 4’x4’ and a full colour image can take him up to two weeks to complete. He always works on several pieces at once so that he can place the scraps he finds in whichever artwork he wants.
His works are highly popular and have been exhibited in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago Sidney and many more. As well as being a fine art artist Derek has work as a designer and illustrator for fifteen years. Some of his design clients include U2, Adidas, Madonna, Harley Davidson, Lucasfilm, National Football League and Dwell Magazine. In 2010 Gores was named “One of the 40 important artists of the New Contemporary Movement”. He has created numerous concerts designs for t-shirts for bands such as One Direction and Madonna.
This image “Miss V, Take 2” is one of many black and white collages of woman. The image shows a seductive woman looking fierce but at the same time vulnerable. Even thought he has collaged the woman with only one eye showing, there is still a strong connection between the character and the viewers. It gives a feeling of eye contact between the two. This is enhanced by her lips being bright red drawing the viewer’s attention to her face and not typically to her naked chest. The black gloves represents sensuality and gives the viewer the impression that the woman is in charge.
Composing this collage Gore’s has zoomed in on the character and filled the canvas. He has used cropping to cancel out the irrelevant parts of the image, which forms a bold statement. By the rest of the collage being created using black, white and grey tones it highlights the bright red lips. When looking closely at the character’s chest you can see Gore has cleverly used two half clock faces to create the round shape of her breasts.
To create highlights on the characters body he has used paper with little print as appose to the darker areas which have been collaged with paper containing a lot of dark subjects. By doing this Gore creates a portrait that looks realistic. It is easy for a piece of artwork like this resulting in looking very cartoon like.
I found discovering the works of Gore’s really exciting as he was an unknown artist to me. The was he takes a unique approach to collaging inspires me. I might be looking at using less colours and more black and white within my own collages to experiment with different tones and shades.
Image Lab Madeleine Page 