DREW MANDIGO | Into the Retro
Drew Mandigo is an artist living in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.
After a more than thirty-year career in Commercial Animation that took him around the world, working in cities such as Paris, London, Berlin, Shanghai, Seoul, Montreal, Toronto, and Castelan, Spain, Drew ultimately settled back in his hometown of Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.
“This is a series of digital collages created starting in 2016, inspired by the spirit of the vintage James Bond novels and films from the early 1960s depicting fictional Bond Girls.
The girls are beautiful and deadly, and I chose a different “signature” weapon for each to use.
The collages are composed using snippets of imagery pulled from the internet, including vintage 50s era fashion, film, music, and even burlesque.”
He has always been involved in some way in the Arts, and joined the Board of Directors of The Council for the Arts In Ottawa in 2007, serving for a number of years, and finally served as Board President.
Mandigo continually created artwork, gravitated to Digital Arts around 2012, and has been prolific in that medium ever since. He constantly creates new series of works of digital collages, utilizing snippets of images pulled from the internet, including photos of 50’s era fashion, film, burlesque, and beyond. One of his more popular series, “The Auntie Mame Series,” was based on the spirit of the 1958 film “Auntie Mame.”
Mandigo created these digital collages in 2015. Some of his work from this series were selected by The City of Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, and Ottawa’s Downtown Rideau BIA to wrap local traffic boxes showcasing the images of the digital collages. These boxes can be found on Ottawa’s Rideau street scattered from Sussex Drive down to King Edward Street, which is a local Arts and Culture hub.
He tends to gravitate towards a retro, colorful and witty, even cheeky edge in his work. He has exhibited his work around Ottawa at such venues as Patrick Gordon Framing, Tennessy Willems Restaurant, Mint studios, Beyond the Pale Brewery, and Vimy Brewing Company, as well as the Ottawa Art Gallery’s Galerie Annexe.
The Queens Series
The Queens series is a series of digital collages created starting in 2019, where I explore the notions of royalty, nobility, and beauty, with imagery, inspired royalty around the world, in different cultures, as well as throughout history.
The collages are composed using snippets of imagery pulled from the internet, including vintage 50s era fashion and film and different ethnicities and historical references.
