The self-taught artist Valton Tyler (1944-2017) lived and worked in Dallas, Texas, and its environs. He created remarkable works — oil paintings, ink drawings on paper, complex etchings — that remain hard to classify according to existing style or genre labels. In 2017, Edward M. Gómez (brutjournal’s founder) and cinematographer Chris Shields made the first-ever film about Tyler’s life and art, which the artist saw before he died. This 42-minute-long film will reside permanently here, on the magazine’s website. It may be viewed in its entirety, free of charge. Watch it and get to know the bright, bizarre world of a techno-baroque visionary. Free access to this article and the film.

New York-based Steve Rudin is both a psychiatrist and an artist, whose ideas about collage art are closely related to and reflect his interests in the nature of narrative, and in memory and identity. Reveling in the openness and unpredictability of the collage technique’s non-linear, random nature, he sees it as a metaphor for the multifaceted human self.

For many years, the pavement-pounding photographer and artist Steven Hirsch has shot photos for newspapers. He has incorporated collage elements into his paintings, sometimes sending up the sensationalism and hysteria of tabloid journalism. “I have tried to morph painting and photography together,” Hirsch has said, “letting go of the photographic process.”

Aubrey Ashlyn Rye had become accustomed to capturing the rhythms and the energy of New York City through spontaneous-feeling street photography but more recently he has been using a collage technique to create photographic compositions, some of which feature his own self-portrait images. These works are moody, mysterious, and multilayered. In them, everything seems to flicker and float.

Robert Holcombe is one of the most original, imaginative artists you’ll never meet. That's because there is a big, not-so-secret secret associated with this maker of collage works characterized by complex compositions and diverse, often humorous references to nature, history, and art. Get to know Holcombe’s story and his remarkable creations.