I start with paper. I cut it directly from old books. I cut up prints that I create in various media. I use the scraps left from the painting before. I paste it on canvas, wood or thicker pieces of paper to create fields of information. Then I work back into these initial backgrounds with paint, then more collage. Eventually, imagined landscapes emerge from the chaos. Worlds built from remnants. The border between natural and urban environments has been of interest lately. Plants, especially flowers are always present. Trial and error is important. Re-contextualizing pieces of pictures into alternate realities can be a struggle. Scraps are, on some level, always scraps. I integrate them into the painting, yet something remains of their past lives. They speak of other pictures than mine. I like having this other voice in my paintings. It brings unanticipated questions to the conversation, and leads me in new directions, up side canyons, and down dead end alleys. My work is as much a product of discoveries made while making it, as it is deliberate. It is more orchestrated than fully controlled. Born, raised and currently residing in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Karsten Creightney received his BA from Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio. He subsequently completed the Professional Printer Training Program at the Tamarind Institute and received an MFA in painting from the University of New Mexico. His work is in the collection of the Arkansas Arts Center, Cleveland Museum of Art, Detroit Institute of Arts, Flint Institute of Arts, Fort Wayne Museum of Art, Kalamazoo Institute of Arts, Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Springfield (MO) Art Museum and numerous other institutions. The Flint Institute of Art organized the artist’s first museum one-person exhibit in 2012, showing approximately thirty works on paper.