Chris Noel's Gallery

I am a graphic designer by trade but when I'm not designing something for one of my clients I am often found in my garage composing abstract graphic paintings or imaginary objects out of what ever I can find. These items are basically collections of various items that no longer seem useful (trash). The sad thing is that I often don't need to look any further than my own home or office to find an abundance of material. It's almost inconceivable to me how much waste our culture manages to generate.

To me, my art is about who we are, right now. It's made from the contemporary artifacts of our time. When working on a piece, I often find myself thinking of creating a relic of past history and how time has a way of putting it's own creative spin on stuff. Much of what we discard in our everyday lives can take on new meaning when we can look at it from a different perspective.

At the very least my artwork is an excuse to preserve some very ordinary things of modern society and to recycle some junk that would otherwise end up in a landfill or get incinerated into the Earth's atmosphere. The process of trans-forming undesirable items into desirable ones is very exciting to me (turning trash into treasure). I like the idea that art can come from almost anything. Even garbage.

I refer to my style as Post-Consumer Realism.

Chris Noel