The Streets of San Francisco: Market to Channel Collage

Brian McDonald is a mixed media collage artist who lives and works in the mission district of San Francisco. His work can be found in numerous private collections across the US, Canada, and Europe. ARTIST STATEMENT: My artwork is driven by a need to make sense of the world around me, which I see as fragmented, contradictory, and anxious. I seek to capture the cartoonishness that runs through American society wherein the individual is not only bombarded by an excess of information, choice, and rampant consumerism, but is also in a constant state of wanting more. Flotsam from this perpetual cycle of consumer pop culture is woven into my paintings, embedding the figures in an intricate web that suggests the non-stop movement of the mind, as well as the depth, complexity, and interconnectedness of life. Music, cartoons, and dreams are a big influence on my work. I am fascinated with their spatial, temporal and structural components, which I see as analogous to contemporary consciousness. I work primarily with layers of paint and collage that are woven together to create a dense network of relationships ripe with narrative possibilities. By using disparate and often ambiguous imagery, the flow of ideas is disrupted, meaning is subverted, and logic is obfuscated. My work becomes infused with an elusive visual poetry that seeks to inspire viewers to make their own connections based on personal associations.