Rex Ray collages

In making collages I usually have to start with a starting point. I have the will but not the ideas. I was looking on Pinterest for collage ideas and I came across an art teacher who used works from artist Rex Ray to inspire her students in collage making. I looked up Rex Ray and I decided I like his art.

He was a graphic designer who branched out into collage and other art forms. He died three months ago, here is one web page offering a retrospective on his life and announcing his death from cancer at the tender age of 58.

Rex Ray retrospective
Rex Ray, the San Francisco-based fine artist and graphic designer known for large-scale, brightly colored, 1960s-inspired, often psychedelic paintings, has succumbed today after a long battle with cancer. Ray, who'd been active on Facebook up until the last week of his illness, entered hospice care over the weekend and posted — or had help posting — one final message to friends this morning, saying, "I've left the building. xo."

Ray had shown work at The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, University Art Museum in Berkeley, San Jose Museum of Modern Art, The Crocker Museum in Sacramento, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver, and Cheryl Haines Gallery. In 2013, he was commissioned to do a mural for the barricade covering the construction of the new Levi's flagship store on Market Street.

In addition to his paintings, Ray was well known to local concert-goers for having designed over 100 concert posters for Bill Graham Presents, including for shows by The Rolling Stones, Patti Smith, REM, Bjork, U2, and Radiohead

I love this one

Interesting and beautiful, aren't they?! Very Klimt-ish, 60s retro.

Here is the Pinterest art teacher's presentation of one of her elementary student artworks inspired by Rex Ray,

Here is mine. It's not good, lol.

A friend gave me vintage Christmas wrapping paper. By vintage it seems to be an era from the 1940s - 50s. That is the paper I used as the flowers. I also had a good piece of black artisan paper, fibrous and thick.

Here is the bad: the black piece of paper was my undoing. It was too thick, it absorbed all the paint. I used three coats on the stems and it still didn't work right. The second thing I did wrong was too much negative space at the top. I'm just really not that good at this. But it is still fun to paint and glue and cut stuff out.

I had fun finding Rex Ray and also working with the vintage paper. So that's good.