I was reading recently about the surrealists because it was a little slow at work one day and I came across the game of Exquisite Corpse. It’s pretty simple, really. You take a piece of paper and fold it into thirds, then one person draws a head, folds it over so it’s obscured, and hands it off to the next person who does a body and then the next person who does legs and feet. Easy.

The second version uses parts of speech to do something similar: The adjective noun adverb verb the adjective noun.

I decided I would do some pieces along those same lines that would play on those ideas. Here’s my first try.

It was kind of fun to put together random parts and textures, and the square format was also challenging, but it did render some cool textural moments.

The piece is much smaller than my regular pieces, which are mostly 18”x24”, while this is only 12”x12”. I decided on the size based on a prompt for a show I want to enter which requires all the art to be 12x12. It’s a different way of thinking which s always good.

Exquisite Corpse 1 - The numinous twilight gently revealed the tragedies of yesterday. The piece has linocut, printed ephemera from books and magazines, vintage wallpapers, colored pencil. paint pens, and acrylic paints.

I think I’ll do another.