I'm taking something which is being used
you could say it's ready to be thrown out
old magazine
and I'm breathing some new life into it
by doing something fresh and creative with it
My name is Giles
I've been working as a graphic designer
for a good number of years
Things started to change for me
when particularly when the digital age arrived
and I know that you know when
you're working in the design field
you've got to be contemporary you've got
to be communicating effectively to the
audience that you're working for
I kind of found myself in a position
where I needed to find something else to do
and one thing that's always stayed with me is
collage
I've always found collage fascinating
When I work in publishing just at different points over
the years if people need an illustration
I would first of all think of using
collage in some way or other that was
what really sort of motivated and inspired
me to do something
both my sons who are
in their 20s they wanted a bit of an
adventure one spring
and we climbed Snowdon
Got up to the top
hadn't anticipated this through the clouds to
see this wall of snow
but we had to get over in order to get onto the top which
we did and we were literally on the top
just as the Sun was rising
So then wehad the Sixth Streets Festival which
which my friends I opened up their front room
and they asked her people to contribute
so I thought I'm going to do
a couple more pieces on Snowdon
because that was so inspirational for me
so I did the couple of pieces, mounted them up
and presented them
they put them up on the wall
and they sold straight away to the
first person literally came through the door
so I thought gosh perhaps I'm onto something here
you know perhaps this is something that people actually
like and all sorts of friends were saying
this is really good you should do more of this
so I used my own photography and again
it might take a few days to find the right shot
this is a scene of the estuary in Whitby
it's going to have reflected colours - the low light at the end of the day
beautiful, dark, rich sky and
lovely terracotta roofs and so on
great reflections in the water which
you can't see it yet but it's going
it's going to come so that's how I start
sketchy at all that in pencil just
really quite roughly
and then I just set to work
so I get my I got my different
coloured bits of bits of source material
from magazines and I do treat it a bit
like an artist palette so rather than
having my different colours of paint laid out on a pallet
I have my different piles of source magazine cuttings
I have my blues; I have my red; I have my greens...
browns, greys...
and I set to work
Sometimes I just have to clear up if I've just got
too much material around it's a bit like
bit like snow blindness where you just
got too much going on
you just can't see what's there
so I have to clear up and
then refocus on now what is it exactly that I want
so I remember from my days
as a graphic designer that there's a product
which is effectively contact adhesive
you literally peel off the backing
and then you and then you've got
a bit of reposition ability with this so
that you know I can I can tack it down lightly
and then reposition it and then
once I'm really happy with that I've got
the right piece in the right place and I
burnish it down again and it's stuck fast
What happens if you make a mistake?
and ya make lots of mistakes and I think
part of the artistic process is being
able to take a fresh look at something
and seeing areas that you want to improve
or do you want to do slightly differently
Probably got in some places
maybe three four or five pieces on top of each other
I want people to be able
to see my work from a distance and see
it as a complete picture and think well
that's that's a great landscape how has he done that
and then it's only when you get close to
that you realize that it's actually
built up from different elements
which you just wouldn't expect to find there
making up the picture
because they've been taken out of context
and making something completely different