Jill Brantley Art



© Jill Brantley

Artist's Statement

I am a constructionist.  I build my surfaces with torn pieces of paper, photocopied images, string, paint, buttons, broken glass, found objects, and pieces and bits of just about anything I can find lying around my house or even on the street. 

I have a fascination with building the surface of my works with all these things that have a history – that are reminiscent of something else – someone else’s life, something lost, something found, something discarded, something picked off the ground.  These are objects that we are all familiar with – that speak of another’s life – their history, my own history.  I like collaging them together to create an image constructed of objects we all know – that we’re all familiar with.

As an image emerges, I begin to weave a narrative. A story unfolds in each of my pieces as I begin to place the pieces of paper and found objects on the canvas – as if I were putting a puzzle together – one of old lives – found memories – into a new piece, creating at once a narrative of new and old, foreign yet familiar. I have a fascination with how the pieces fit together – creating layers of time, layers of paint, layers of history – all melting into one piece – one new narrative.