They F*** You Up Collage

The photo of the poet stood out to me when I came across it because it was absurd for the writer Philip Larkin to be holding a wicker rabbit. By chance I had read some Larkin poetry because a very good friend of mine considers him to be her favorite poet. The same friend is also obsessed with rabbits, cute or strange, and so I pointed out the image to her. As I'm working on a series of portraits of poets and writers, "The Writing on the Wall," I revived the curious image and prepared to create something inspired by the poetry of Philip Larkin. He has a quality of simultaneous frankness and restraint about his writing. He is candid and wry yet there is never much in way of huge gushing emotions or revelation. Originally I surrounded the beige canvas with colorful juggling balls, a reference to one of his works, but when I found the rabbit ears I knew I had to keep this simple and just give him the absurdly appealing reverse anthropomorphic touch. It was more than enough. I originally called the painting "Sudden Angel," also referencing his poetry, but it didn't work as a title without the jester's balls and some wings and things that were going to appear. In trying to find the right title I kept asking myself, "Why on earth would Larkin be wearing rabbit ears?" Of course it was a bingo moment when the light went on- the first line of his most famous poem. Larkin had a complex relationship with his mother, with whom he was very close. Both were depressive souls. Many speculated that Larkin's intimacy with his mom was unhealthy and stood in the way of other relationships. Larkin himself had his trademark cynical but pragmatic outlook on his folks, as immortalized in the most iconic of his verses: "They f*** you up, your mum and dad/They may not mean to, but they do." Square foot 12x12 inch mixed media collage and painting on canvas. Edges painted, ready to hang. Working in the square foot format liberates me to explore old fashioned cut and paste collage along while experimenting with as many other media as possible, including graphite, pastel, acrylic and spray paints, glitter glue, metallic leaf, chalk, pencil crayons, and more. I love words and images and collage is all about eclectic curiosity and the joy of juxtaposition. The unexpected narratives and suggested stories that appear are an act of chance, or of fate; each piece is an unplanned collision of memory, imagination, and fabrication. "A superhuman effort to coalesce the imaginative world." Moray Mair, Mutant Space Arts "Luzajic, like Wonder Woman, is her own institution." Paul Robinson, Blog Critics "Queen of the fantastic." Carrie Shibinsky, Art Bomb Daily Lorette says, "I am driven by eclectic curiosity, and by the joy of juxtaposition. My work is a curiosity cabinet and an apothecary of magic potions and spells. It is poetry, and a surreal dream. It is the frantic pace of the city and the magnificent silence of the night. It is about love and death and the sacred and inane, and the absurdity and beauty in all things." Compared to Rauschenberg, Schwitters, and Basquiat, and inspired by Warhol, Joseph Cornell, Robert Motherwell, and Antoni Tapies, Lorette C. Luzajic wears her influences on her sleeve. Appropriating relentlessly from art history, advertising, music, poetry, fiction, culture, religion, and travel, she plunders everything but creates work that is original and entirely her own. Lorette writes, "A collagist is always looking, always deconstructing and reconstructing. From dentist waiting room magazines to church hymnals to art history masterpieces at the museum to nightclub flyers, my mind is constantly snipping, juxtaposing, discovering, experimenting, replacing, gluing over, scraping back layers, recontextualizing." Lorette's use of materials reflects the same montage quality as the varied concepts that inspire her. She uses acrylic paint, gouache paint, watercolour, spray paint, ink, fabric paint, chalk pastel, oil stick, oil pastel, crayons, pencil crayons, graphite, found papers, found photographs, found images, house paint, plaster, silicone, pen, markers, cosmetics, glues, stickers, and any other media she can incorporate. Lorette studied for and received a Bachelor of Applied Arts degree in journalism, but went on to focus on creative work in visual art, photography, poetry, and writing about art. She is the editor of The Ekphrastic Review at www.ekphrastic.net, a journal dedicated exclusively to literature inspired by visual artwork. She has published hundreds of her own poems and stories in nearly 200 magazines, journals and blogs, as well as a dozen books of poetry or essays on art, life, and interesting people. She teaches workshops on ekphrastic writing and on art without drawing. Her visual art shows regularly at home in Toronto, Canada, including at the Spoke Club, the Gladstone Hotel, Artusiasm Gallery, the Flying Pony Gallery, the Ritz Carlton, the Toronto Outdoor Art Exhibition, Scotiabank Contact Photography Festival, the Toronto Artist Project, Hashtag Gallery, Project Gallery, and more. She has also shown work further afield, including Brisbane, Bristol, Edinburgh, Los Angeles, San Diego, Chicago, New York, and more. She recently participated in an international artists symposium in Tunisia, working to create paintings for the Ministry of Culture and to show in two exhibitions in Tunis and Hammamet. She also visited Mexico recently for a duet exhibition at Le Cirque Galeria in Merida, Yucatan and a number of group shows at other venues. In March of 2018, Lorette took the top $5000 award for an art contest sponsored by E11even Restaurant and Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment. Her mixed media paintings have found homes all over the world, and hang in collections alongside originals by Miro, Erte, Dubuffet, Ellsworth Kelly, Jim Dine, Jane Ash Poitras, and Benjamin Chee Chee. www.mixedupmedia.ca View a short documentary about my work from Val Peter and Kyle Robinson at Artists Unknown: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbLL94Abd4k&t=39s

Collage:Collage on Canvas

Original:One-of-a-kind Artwork

Size:12 W x 12 H x 0.8 D in

Delivery Time:Typically 5-7 business days for domestic shipments, 10-14 business days for international shipments.