All the lonely people, where do they all come from?

Jerry Jeanmard conjures his playfully subversive figures from vintage papers and ephemera with an assured yet beguiling lightness.

His new exhibition, 'All the Lonely People, Where Do They All Come From?', opening at the gallery next week, features the Houston-based artist's most recent series of collages. Jeanmard introduces an arresting cast of characters: a mermaid emerging from scraps of discarded tidal graphs, a traffic cop with a jaunty bus-ticket hat, a lady with an ink stole and sparkling quatrefoil brooch.

Intellectually and politically charged, Jerry Jeanmard’s art has an almost surreal quality that reflects his instinctive working process. Beginning with little preconception of the finished image, he allows his assorted scraps of paper to take on their own personality as he arranges – and re-arranges – them.

Even after they are finished, the identities of his figures remain artfully elusive, left invitingly to the imaginative interpretations of the viewer.

Jeanmard had a distinguished career as an illustrator and graphic designer in the 1970s and 80s before concentrating on his own artistic practice. His rich store of vintage papers – the source material for his art – has been assembled over many years. This is his second solo exhibition at the Rebecca Hossack Art Gallery.