As a painter, I began using the camera to accumulate imagery, creating in effect, digital collages that would serve as source material for my paintings. It became evident that the collaged photographs were complete in themselves: an end rather than a means. Fractured narratives became central, as disparate elements assume shifting meanings and prominences. My latest works focus on the alienation and erosion of our relationship to nature. We are no longer an intrinsic part of the natural world, but mere observers, more comfortably situated within mediation, hyper-reality, and novelty. The continuous distraction and ephemerality of contemporary life deepen that distance, rendering the natural world—both within us and outside us—increasingly oblique, almost dreamlike.
Andrew Raz (b.1954) is an Ohio-based artist working across painting and photography. He studied at the Cleveland Institute of Art before earning his BFA from the Philadelphia College of Art and his MFA in painting and printmaking from Tyler School of Art. His work has been shown at the Cleveland Museum of Art May Show, the Butler Institute of American Art, Notre Dame College, the Ohio Artist Registry Juried Exhibition, Spaces Gallery, 2731 Prospect Contemporary Art Gallery, and Klimat Lounge, NYC, among other venues.