Namon Bills is an innovative collage artist who also works in digital art. Bills received a BFA in Painting from Brigham Young University and an MFA in Painting from Utah State University. “I have always wanted to be an artist,” says Bills. He lives in Utah.

Tell us about your evolution as an artist. I started out with collage, and although I’ve branched out to other media since then, I still consider myself, fundamentally, a collage artist in that I’m constantly combining a variety of physical elements, images and media to create my art. Although I still do collage, I discovered that it also has its limitations — mainly in size. So I started creating larger work by combining images in digital compositions (essentially doing digital collage) and then using the digital composition as a guide for making physical work through layers of collage, painting, drawing and/or printmaking. As a grad student I decided to do an installation for my thesis exhibit, which led me to another realm of visual expression. Although I’ve continued to dabble in installation, including my most recent solo show, Elements, at Finch Lane Gallery this summer, I still feel most comfortable working in two dimensions, combining collage, acrylic and oil.

At the tail end of my grad-school career, I suggested an idea to some artist friends for a group show, the State Street Project, based on a road trip down Highway 89 from the Idaho border to the Arizona border. I hadn’t anticipated becoming a curator, but that show, which traveled to six different venues in 2008, led directly to another show the following year, The 9 Muses, an interdisciplinary effort involving 9 artists and 9 poets. I’ve curated at least one show each year since then. I consider curating an important extension of my own work as an artist. It’s been a richly fulfilling experience to work with several artists on these shows, with topics ranging from politics and immigration to honoring those who have influenced our work.

You have said that your art ‘focuses on the Hegelian concept of synthesis, both on formal and conceptual levels’. Explain. The German philosopher Hegel suggested that over the course of history an idea, the thesis, will arise, which will then be challenged by a contrasting concept, the antithesis. Eventually the two will be resolved by an overarching, unifying concept, the synthesis. When, as a grad student, I came across this concept of synthesis, it really resonated with me. It was as if someone had put into words what my artwork had been about all along.

My art — starting with collage and expanding to mixed media, installation and even my curatorial efforts — seeks to combine various, often disparate elements, into a unified whole. This is most obvious on a formal level. A collage, for example, may combine several images from unrelated sources; the challenge is to bring them together in such a way that they feel like they belong with each other — and hopefully so that they feel like they depend on each other for the success of the piece as a whole. Synthesis is also important to me on a conceptual level. In using collage and mixed media, I’m bringing together a variety of ideas that, by their juxtaposition, imply an interrelatedness. My hope is that this leads the view to consider potential meaning in a way they perhaps wouldn’t have otherwise. I don’t always have the same concept, or even a set concept, for each piece, but I hope to create conceptually open-ended work that will invite viewers to participate in the process of establishing meaning — hence another layer of synthesis as the viewer joins the artist in creating previously nonexistent meaning with the artwork as catalyst.

You’ve worked as an editor, programmer, and teacher. How do these pursuits affect your art? I think your environment always affects you as an artist. My work as a graphic designer, both in print and web, has definitely influenced my aesthetic, which already had a graphic bent even before I worked in those fields. These jobs have also provided the opportunity to learn new skills, from photography to HTML, which have provided additional practical avenues for artistic expression. I also love teaching. I’ve been inspired by my students’ creative approaches to problem solving and their inventive use of materials. Beyond that, I find that the creative energy of being in the classroom gives me additional drive to produce work when I get back into the studio.

What’s next for you? I’ve been exploring some new directions with my work — leaning toward a more minimal aesthetic. At the same time, I’m continuing to delve into new ideas with my text-based work. I’m also hoping to explore some new media, particularly encaustic. In addition to my own work, I’m continuing to curate shows. I’ll have a follow-up exhibit to Don’t Read This, which showed at the Salt Lake Library in January of 2015, called Don’t Read This Too, at the Springville Museum of Art July-September 2016.

Visit Namon Bills’ website.

Trevor Southey was a celebrated Mormon artist and former instructor at BYU who passed away earlier this week in Utah. His specialty was the human figure through drawings, paintings, and sculpture. Southey was one of the first major Mormon artists to come out. He lived most recently in the Bay Area, California and then spent his final years in Utah before passing away.

The Salt Lake Tribune explains, “Southey was born in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) in 1940, descended from European colonists who settled in Cape Town, South Africa, in the 17th century. He converted to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints after hearing four missionaries singing in harmony and upon learning of the Mormon belief in the divinity of man. After a stint in art school in Sussex, England, Southey emigrated to America, studying at Brigham Young University in Provo. He received two degrees at BYU and taught there through 1977.”

They call me a misfit: Southey explained on his website, “They call me a misfit. I freely acknowledge that my particular art does not easily have a place in the current art world. It is certainly not cutting edge as defined by the establishment but nor is it always easily accessible to the novice. A curator once said to me that I appear to have missed the 20th century. That is not true because I love much of the art of this period and indeed my work does carry some of the language and is somewhat liberated by it, not wedded to any period but tending to visit many. But my work really evolved rather blithely; free of much influence because I lived in what was truly a backwater. Added to that was my somewhat isolated childhood (ill health) elaborated an already retiring and romantic nature. So I come to this time and place honestly and with enthusiasm. Of course, there is part of me that wishes I were more adventurous, but that would be a direction taken for the wrong reason. I express myself as I do because that is who I am as a poetically inclined individual. Allowing my natural subconscious free rein and trying to hold back intellectual interference to a large extent is the way that I work. I hope your perusal of this portfolio will be enriching for you.”

Visit Trevor Southey’s website.

Images courtesy Salt Lake Tribune, University of Utah, Trevor Southey.

Emily McPhie is a talented, inventive, and creative painter. She grew up in Utah and received a BFA with an emphasis in painting from BYU. McPhie lives with her husband and four spooky kids in Chandler, Arizona.

How would you describe yourself as an artist?

A storyteller.

A seeker of truth.

A quiet observer.

An imaginative dreamer.

An interpreter.

One who yearns for beauty, honesty and simplicity.

You once said you have “a need to decipher and a yearning to create”. I love making things and I want to make sense of the world and of my experience in it. When I create paintings I am fulfilling three needs: order, beauty, and expression. I organize an idea into an image, do my best to make it beautiful, and ultimately try to portray emotion, thought, story, and realizations. Often, I experience catharsis – as in a purging of emotions that results in renewal – when I paint that sorts out the muddle and jumble in my head. The amazing result of my inward and authentic expression is that, we being similar creatures, my work can be a light in the world. And that is pretty awesome.

What themes do you most like to explore? Do you start with an image in your mind or subject matter you want to illustrate? I’m a mother of four and that defines and consumes me. I’ve grown into this person I am through a steady tic tock of mothering my darling children and creating art. All of this woven with threads of love and faith, spirituality and devotion. I fancy myself a storyteller. I love creating art around my interpretations of existing stories and stories of my own that identify strengths and weaknesses, or recognize emotions that are so so deep down that they can’t be grabbed and brought into the light, or that celebrate humanity and the sorrow and the joy to be had in this existence. I’d like to go about my business with a pair of parabolic lenses, learning truth and moral lessons as the days roll by.

My images usually come from an idea, a crazy brain dump in words on a page of my sketchbook, or after rolling around in my head for a while. I that case, I sketch, take pictures, gather images and patterns and puzzle a piece together. Sometimes things happen in reverse, I’ll have a picture jump out at me and it will morph into a painting with the meaning emerging out of the image. The start is my favorite part, dreaming up a composition and watching it take form as I play around with it.

How has your style evolved over the years? The maturity that comes with experience upon experience as life whirls by has given me and my art new depth. It’s a beautiful gift that has me looking forward to what will unfold in the future.

Visit Emily McPhie’s website.

Follow Emily McPhie on Instagram.

Marwan Nahlé is an artist of the world. Nahlé was born in Beirut, Lebanon and is an alumnus of the LDS International Art Competition (Mount of Olives, below). He also works in mixed media, photography, and collage. Nahlé currently lives in Lebanon.

Tell us about your background and art. As an artist I work with multiple medias from painting with a brush to using my hands doing collages than recycling trash into art for my love for mother earth I clean my surrounding from the trash found in forests the sea and my neighborhood. I draw my inspiration from being in nature walking around breathing and ideas just flows to me often traveling to a new destinations more and newer inspiration arrive I go to my studio I had one in New York, Portland Salt Lake City, Paris, Beirut and work for periods of six months.  I was interested in all religions for a while, now more connecting with the natives from all cultures and into mother earth, traveling the world had opened my mind and heart to look at all humans as one scattered family, no one is better or worth just different and special.

Colby Adams Sanford creates incredible religious pieces with acrylics, wood, and reclaimed materials. He was profiled previously for his paintings in China. Sanford says of his unique style, “Reclaiming materials and making them something beautiful – a metaphor of what Christ can do for us.”

How did you get started commercially? It has always been my dream to be able to support my family through my painting. A dream that my sweet wife has helped me realize is possible more than anybody. I just had to jump in. There was one point in China that I had this huge pile of completed paintings and not really enough space to put it all in our tiny China “apartment”. (I use quotes because we didn’t even have a kitchen–a hot plate on a card table is not a kitchen!) So I spent the week nights making a website. I put my paintings on there and surprisingly enough, stuff started to sell. I did a show when we came back to visit one summer and I sold more than half of the pieces! I am definitely still just getting started, but I have loved meeting people face to face and talking to them about my art.

How do you utilize Instagram? Instagram and I have a love/hate relationship. It pushes me to get things done every day because I try to be consistent in posting, but it also puts up such a blinded view of life. I try to keep it up as a constant connection to the people that I love and that take time to follow me, who I am, and what I do. To all of you who are following along, thank you!

Visit Colby Adams Sanford’s website.

Follow Colby Adams Sanford on Instagram.