Stephen Cranston

Born in Glossop, Derbyshire 1972.

I often discover what I am making whilst making it, juxtaposing disparate imagery and materials. I embrace chaos and chance, channeled within the confines of tidy spaces; the size and medium dictated by what I have to hand. There are familiar themes in my work, often diametrically opposed, and the process of making becomes an attempt at maintaining balance between them, such as artifice with truth, absurdity with rationality, incongruity with belonging, esotericism with lucidity.

After experimenting with new ways to generate compositions for use in my collage work, I have recently made the switch from using ‘found’ imagery from second-hand books, to using my own photography. Prior to this I wouldn’t always set out with much of an agenda when making a collage. It is the result of the processes I use that I am immediately interested in, and any meaning that I find in my finished efforts is often arrived at organically through the process of chance and play in their creation. However, as the producer of the photoshoot, and author of the photographs I now use, the imagery can come pre-charged with meaning, and rather than sifting-through and curating a collection of chance found-images to collage to...

Fine Art Printmaking. Norwich School of Art and Design.