This week we dropped in to see contemporary collage artist, Bonnie and Clyde in her Brighton studio.
Formerly the Coronation cinema, her studio building in the heart of Brighton’s North Laine has a light blue façade that wouldn’t look out of place in one of her collages. We take the winding and somewhat wobbly staircase up to Steph, the creative mind behind Bonnie and Clyde, surrounded by colourful collages of pastel skies, palm trees, architecture and signage in different textures and techniques that show her creative though process at work.
Now The Fun Begins by Bonnie and Clyde
After studying 3D design at Kingston University, Steph set up a successful graphic design business creating posters, brochures, book sleeves, signage and website to full festival campaigns. Her passion for photography grew and she began combining her self-taken photographs with her graphics skills and a new talent for screen printing to produce captivating mixed media collages.
She begins by sifting through her extensive collection of photographs she has taken from her trips abroad. Physically taking the photos of her destination herself and picking up on the atmosphere, light and colour palette of her surroundings, she will take hundreds of pictures for her archives to work with later. She then scans them into her computer before starting the lengthy process of printing, scanning, cutting, layering, painting and passing back and forth between the computer and paper.
Using a combination of monochrome and highly saturated areas of colour, with textured paint, elements of distressed, heavy paper and magazine cuttings her finished prints possess a level of depth only possible from such a labour of love.
Lesson 1. Happiness by Bonnie and Clyde
Her passion for travel is a thread woven throughout her collages as she merges different cities to create a dreamland that is familiar yet fictional. Highly emotive her new print work responds to socio-political environments intertwined with her own personal experiences. Immersing the viewer in beautiful and bizarre cityscapes.
20 x 20cm
Limited edition of 250