Mary Lou Zelazny

I have been making paintings with collage for the past 20 years. The spontaneity of collage combined with the rigors of painting and drawing create multiple meanings whose sorting and unraveling drives the content. My subjects are improvisations and it is here where my humor, discomfort, incomprehension, and pleasure can coexist. This indirect method appeals to me because of the unpredictability and technical demands that it presents. The fusion of photographic images and paint generates tensions within the vocabulary of picture making which in turn becomes a further source of motivation and inspiration. Art history's endless examples of visual translation offer me a rich encyclopedia of visual forms upon which I improvise and reflect.

I have divided the images into distinct subject headings in order to organize different bodies of work dating back to the early 1980's. You will see recurrent themes or motifs that I have revisited over the years, reexamined from new perspectives or modified by different technical applications.

Mythologies

I have constructed visual worlds for monsters and figures to inhabit. Here received wisdom concerning anthropology, contemporary society, and art history is reinvented. These new landscapes and habitations include the objects, tools, and detritus found in such a world. The creatures perform the various activities of life: commerce, travel, construction, romance, and domestic chores.