I started drawing (rather well) as a kid, and loved the idea of becoming an artist. However, life happened, and I ended up becoming a programmer, and later a tech news blogger. Art came back to my life when I was slowly dying from a mysterious disease. I was locked at home, with nothing to do, so I started doing some video editing on the side. In 2011, I finally figured out the problem (undiagnosed celiac disease), found the cure via the Paleo diet, and art flourished. My brain kind of became re-programmed when I found my health. Collages kind of happened. Sometimes I feel that collage was a gift for eventually figuring out what was wrong with me for all these years.

Surreal collage can give you some unique ideas about film. Unfortunately, to realise these in a film (rather than in a static image) would be very expensive. Except some composition and colour, filmmaking and collage haven’t had a big intersection in my life.

Lesser copyright danger. I’m sorry for not being more romantic and pseudo-intellectual about it, but the truth is, collagists mostly use vintage material because the danger of copyright infringement is smaller (although we do consider our acts fair use).
Having said that, vintage images shot with kodachrome film look way better than modern digital images (and even film developed after 1980). They have a ‘painting’ quality to them. The few collagists who use modern digital camera images today, their work looks like photomontage. Vintage collage is closer to painting, aesthetically.
As for the femme fatale themes: people like them. I found that plain surreal landscapes, or abstract imagery is just not liked as much online. My personal favourites are meta-psychedelic landscape-y scenes. I’ve noticed that artists prefer the sort of things I like: abstract, complex scenes that have a strong atmosphere. But the people at large prefer simpler ideas (e.g. women, couples, flowers etc.) that they can comprehend within 1-2 seconds of looking at them.

I work digitally for collages because it doesn’t make any sense today to do paper collages. Digital collages that aren’t using soft cuts, and they don’t have their colours pushed in Photoshop, they look exactly the same as paper collages on the screen, or when printed. Since most people prefer prints and products (e.g. t-shirts), rather than original artworks, it makes no sense to me to work by hand. The logistics for it don’t add up. Not to mention that commissions are always required to be digital, since deep changes are inevitable.

Yes, and these I do on paper. Unlike collages, ink work is vastly different on paper than digitally. Digital illustrations that aren’t done on paper are too obvious, and I love the organic feel of non-perfect ink lines.

A smile mostly, and as a second reaction, hopefully, an awe of what awaits us in the hyperspace. I’m an advocate of people using entheogenic substances, like DMT, or practicing lucid dreaming and transcendental meditation, because I believe that the realms that can be seen via these methods are objectively real, and that the human race needs to know about them. So I hope that some of my meta-psychedelic collages offer a glimpse of that world. For the record, my mode of operating in these realms is via lucid dreams, not entheogens.

Hyperspace. Aliens. The universe. I don’t really care much about my human condition, which is why when I do depict it in my collages it’s full of sarcasm. I feel like a prisoner in my human form. My art is my escape.

Cur3es, David Delruelle, Magritte. And The Matrix movie.

Currently, I’m bogged down by commissions, but I hope that I have new, different type of work soon. And this time, if people don’t like the new style, I don’t care!