John Diephouse
My goal for my collages is to create images that evoke a story of some kind. I draw from a wide range of my photographic subjects such as landscapes, botanicals, and wildlife as well as urban environments and people in my creative work.
I follow an intuitive yet somewhat ordered process of layering or merging portions of images until an image that speaks to me emerges. Images often suggest a sense of time and place, or reflect a rich and ethereal interplay of colour, shape or form.
Images may provoke an indefinable question that does not readily yield answers without further study and reflection.
Fighting the Inevitable
Fighting the Inevitable
Seeking to dredge from the fog of dreams the fragmentary memories of threats or dangers…wisps of consciousness…. Images chimera-like in their elusiveness….scenes ungrounded in reality but terrifyingly real at the same time, a feeling of helplessness and the conflict of fight vs. flight in a futile experience of….fighting the inevitable.
Ghost In The Machine
Ghost In The Machine
The power and pervasiveness of artificial intelligence continue to grow and provide new and often unanswerable questions. The digital collage explores a conundrum that results from the expanding role of the virtual world of technology, automation, and artificial intelligence: does technology elevate our humanity by serving our needs, or do they subtly strip and overshadow the essence of human nature, making us….ghosts in the machine.
Rat Race Consumption Conundrum
Rat Race (Consumption Conundrum)
Do we work to live or live to work? Do we derive meaning from our labors or is our daily existence a never-ending pursuit of more? Do our efforts produce an end result of substance, personal meaning and value or does this all pale in comparison to the depersonalizing process of bartering our time and vitality in exchange for fungible assets? This digital collage/composite image reflects a seemingly endless cycle of work life in which we, as mere cogs in much larger entities, chase after but seldom achieve the desired goals.
Seasons Emerging
Seasons come and seasons go….with mysterious, yet utterly predictable and almost mechanical precision, This composite image/collage explores the powerful yet almost entirely invisible forces that power our environment. Forces that are in a state of constant evolution and change while operating on a cycle that allow us, perhaps falsely, to experience a sense of stability and comfort.
Seasons Emerging
Visitor
Visitor
Nestled safely inside our framework of beliefs, perspectives, and personal defenses, we occasionally encounter that which is novel or unique to our universe….an idea, a fresh insight, a new experience that can provoke many questions….is it real? Is it valid? Does it bring a gift? Does it pose a threat or risk to the world we have created? Is this a malevolent intruder or simply a curious, benevolent visitor?
Dreaming of the Return
Dreaming of the Return
Birds sing on the hands of the public clock in a village square, measuring the minutes, hours, and days that measure an all too familiar and exhausting journey. All existing in a momentary flash in our minds eye, our mind wanders as we dream of the return…to home, to familiarity, to comfort and warmth.
Eavesdropping
Eavesdropping
Do multiple parallel universes exist? Do objects that appear inanimate and fixed in our reality have a dynamic life and social interaction in other planes of existence? This digital collage is a whimsical anthropomorphic exploration of the relationships between abstract objects, imagining each slyly attempting to listen in, observe, compete with and triumph over its neighbours. Not unlike life in the suburbs…
Escaping The Matrix
Escaping The Matrix
Life appears to be a perpetual search for stability amidst change and simultaneously a need for change amidst stability. It seems as if one cannot exist or have purpose without the other. This composite image/collage explores the dichotomy of rigid structure and the dynamic energy of spontaneous and random movement, much like the inherent conflict between individual expression and the need for communal norms.
