Daryl Thetford

We are bombarded with advertisements on billboards, cars, television, and even in the sky. News, e-mail, weather updates, images of war, social networking pages, and stories of loss, hunger, and natural and man-made disasters are delivered to our computers and phones night and day; their arrivals are announced with a beep or chime. Stories of hoarding and addictions—to food, spending, sex, money, and even other people—frighten and fascinate us. But because we are unable to take in the whole picture at once, we are forced to view the world in fragments, creating a sense of disarray and heightened anxiety and confusion.

The nature of chaos inspires my work. Collage provides a means to reflect and express the tension between our fragmented struggle for understanding and simultaneously articulate the beauty that can emerge from disorder. My work challenges the existing structures we use to cope with disarray, and suggests that, through a studied and coherent reassembling of fragments, we can gain a more diverse and integrated view of the world and ourselves.