Toronto artist David Woodward creates dreamy nature collages that play with texture, composition, and the natural world.
Woodward's collages are created from photographs saturated with a vintage aesthetic, reminiscent of classic National Geographic magazines or geography textbooks. He uses the textures of nature as his palette, and chooses swatches that are sun bleached, greyscale, or deeply pigmented to highlight the aesthetic beauty of sand, water, and foliage. His compositions are controlled and curated, creating an idealistic yet fragmented final work. Describing his process, Woodward states, "the aspect of collage I enjoy the most is the process – finding an unusual book or magazine that becomes subject matter for a collage, and then fitting different cutouts together until they achieve a cohesion that feels like the end to a jigsaw puzzle."
David Woodward's body of work is impressively unified and showcases his exceptional talent for complex compositions. Their adventurous, exotic, dream-like environment draws us in and allows us to long for harmony with the natural world alongside him.
