The Fantastical Digital Collage by Bryan Michael Greene
Bryan Michael Greene dabbles in fantasy of the Dungeons and Dragons genre mixed with a bit of ritual art for the dead, layers of artistic genius and digital technology to create unique works of art, usually portraits, he refers to as digital collage.
Behind the closed door of Greene’s studio at ArtsWestchester in White Plains you may hear the wails of a heavy metal song and the deep pulse of a bass guitar which lets you know Greene is in and he’s busy at work creating his next collage series. Final presentations may be framed and hung on a wall, but a great deal of model-making, painting, photography and digital computer work is part of the overall production.
Greene says he first became interested in art after high school when he took a summer oil painting course on the east end of Long Island. “Before that I played Dungeons and Dragons and collected comic books. I also had a collection of Warhammer figurines,” Greene said. “I used to make copies of what I saw in the comic books, only larger so I could decorate my room. I did this all free hand. One of my art teachers gave me encouragement so I decided to pursue things further.”
Greene joined the Art Students League of New York and began figure drawing where he focused on finding his own style by interpreting the shapes he saw in the human body. “I was my own model for a while,” Greene remembered. “I would use a mirror.”
Greene earned both bachelors and masters degrees in Fine Arts. As a student he learned about the work of Egon Schiele, an Austrian expressionist artist who stylized his work by painting the body the way he saw it. Greene also was attracted to the work of Gustav Klimt, an Austrian symbolist painter who created abstract backgrounds. “I found both of these styles pleasing and wanted to emulate them,” Green said. By pulling these two styles together I could create portraits that were unique because all the elements came from the specific tastes of the subject I was working with.
Returning to his childhood love of working with miniatures, Greene creates detailed dioramas incorporating landscapes lush with vegetation and miniature art. These dioramas act as the background for a series of scenes Greene shoots with a digital camera from various angles. He uses a Nikkon D-700 for the backgrounds.
Greene then adds other art elements such as skulls and flowers, always to be selected by his client and finishes with a series of photo shoots with the client as the subject, either dressed in costume or taken from his or her life. For these shots Greene uses a Panasonic GF-1. Greene then pulls the elements together digitally to form a composite he calls the digital collage.
Bryan adds a lot of feline characteristics to his art. “I had a cat that was born at the same time I was. When it died 21 years later it was a real loss to me. I found the skull with the flowers was like a funeral,” Greene explained.
Greene likes to work with orchids because they are his mother’s favorite flower. “I used to buy real flowers and paint them, but they became flat, so I now use artificial stems. The paintings Greene does of the flowers are duplicates of the real thing, but there are some unique elements that make them all Greene’s own.
It’s a little like Halloween every day for Greene because he works in the world of fantasy and that is what he wants to provide to his clients. “They can work with me to create a piece of art that is all their own. Their own fantasy come to life,” he says, or maybe a stylized version of who they are or want to be.
To view some of Greene’s work visit www.bryanmichaelgreene.com
