Ben Giles « Muybridge's Horse

Ben Giles

I’ve fallen completely in love with the cut paper collages of Ben Giles. The young artists uses sources like National Geographic magazines and thrift store books from the 1940s through 1960s and a pair of scissors to create his stunning collages by hand, not digitally. I’m sharing a collection of my personal favorites featuring mostly giant arrays of types of animals, but the majority of Giles’ artworks mix ordinary scenes with surreal, psychedelic imagery. I love his manner of combining the old with the new, where it seems every other way of achieving this today involves computerized manipulation and digital technology.

In an interview with The World Through Green Eyes, when asked, “What is your relationship with nature?,” Giles answered,”This is a really different and interesting question to start with, I’m often overwhelmed with it, sometimes it can be just too much, the smells of autumn and spring can be overpowering at times, for both good and bad reasons, nature can press me down, I should probably be saying how beautiful it is, and it is, but it has a different effect on me, I can feel worthless and small and inconsiderate. Pollution and the vastness of exploitation angers me, yet I do nothing to stop It, I’m as bad as anybody else, I’m such an insignificant part of this world when I step outside, it can bring anybody back down to the ground.”

One more quote, noting his distaste for smartphones, social media, and the like, from the East Anglian Daily Times: “You know how it used to be that you’d go to a museum and want to take a photograph of something you saw? Now, it’s ‘take photographs on the way there, take photographs on the way back,’ and then constantly show people. You’re paying more attention to showing other people your pictures than you are in experiencing that thing you went to see. It’s not really for me.”

This attitude paired with his incredible artworks–I think I’ve found a new favorite artist.