In his latest series, Broken Books, Wisconsin artist Fred Stonehouse revives and re-contextualizes fragments of antique books to create rich paintings. Complex and full of dark humor, these re-imagined paintings pricked with anecdotal bits and Stonehouse's classic characters present eerily improbable, yet somehow familiar scenarios that strike a balance of wit, absurdity, mystery, and suspense.
The book cover pieces specifically came out of collecting antique paper and book pages for the drawings and collaged background works I do. The covers were a byproduct of cannibalizing the old books for whatever usable paper they might contain. I couldn't bring myself to discard the book covers, thinking that I would eventually figure out how to use them.
I enjoy using materials that have an embedded history; it is something I've always been attracted to. The book cover series allows me to react to something that already has a presence and inherent dialog, and gives me the chance to add to the conversation."
-Fred Stonehouse
Selected Collections: Milwaukee Art Museum; Madison Museum of Contemporary Art; Tacoma Art Museum; San Jose Museum of Art; Block Museum, Northwestern University; Haggerty Museum of Art, Milwaukee, WI; University of Arizona Art Museum; Sheryl Crow; Madonna
