"Based in Borrego Springs, artist Robin Young has been working in mixed media since her 20’s, focusing mostly on collage and contemporary art making. Her focus on collage art using magazine clippings, masking tape, wallpaper, jewelry, feathers, foil etc. allows her to develop deep into the whimsical and intuitive.

When creating my work, I will rely on paper and fabrics instead of paint or pencil. Rummaging through hundreds of scraps of fabric, wallpaper, magazines, print works, art papers and hand pressed papers; I “paint” with these discarded remnants much like painters work with paints, twisting and binding the scraps into lines and marks. I am attracted to the humor of the everyday bizarre, seeking to make myself laugh through the imagery in my pieces. In my everyday collage work sometime my mind goes to a strange place; a koi pond head and erector set industrial non gender skirted person in big comfy easy chair for instance.

During the pandemic I was forced to quarantine fairly extensively in the Southern California desert where I live. At this time seeking refuge from the ongoing loneliness through my own humor and art, making pieces with twists on the sardonic and sometimes disturbing.

The act of collaging for me can sometimes border on the impulsive. Sitting on my soft yellow couch, I will often begin flipping through sourced magazines (mostly vintage) until something piques my interest and off I go with a pair of scissors, slicing the image haphazardly from the page. Then, with adamant ferocity I delves through the stacks of collected source materials to complete the image I have in mind. Finishing the whole thing off with a title that helps to narrate what I see in the collaged work in front of me.

Much of my daily collage work is small, not bigger than an 8”x10”, and held together under plastic laminate. They resemble postcards, artistic me- mentos from my life, with a small love letter title letting you in on a secret sealed up under a thin layer of plastic."

- Robin Young.

Published 29th December 2023.