Mixed Media Art is a type of artwork where a variety of mediums are utilized. There is an important difference between “mixed-media” artworks and “multimedia art”. Mixed media mean a work of visual art that mixes several traditionally unique visual art media. To provide an example, a work on canvas that mixes paint, ink, and also collage could appropriately be called a “mixed media” work – but not a work of “multimedia art.” The concept of a multimedia art means a greater scope than mixed media, mixing visual art with non-visual materials (including recorded sound, for example) or with elements of the other arts (such as literature, drama, dance, motion graphics, music, or interactivity).

What we know today as mixed media art started during the early twentieth century, when artists looking for an alternative to what they found as hidebound academicism began including things and images that were certainly not considered to be art materials in their works. Good examples of everyday materials being included in ceremonial or aesthetic materials can be found dating back to prehistory, however, these were produced with different intentions, and served an extremely different social purpose compared to the objects all of us consider as “art.”

In the 1930s, Henri Matisse utilized cut-paper shapes as basic work for commissioned items to be accomplished in other media. But in 1947, he published a small portfolio of 20 color plates of his cutout designs. Joseph Cornell’s work in stage just like boxed assemblages during the early 1940s started out the abstract expressionists’ exploration of collage as an art form. The freedom of expression engendered through collage explorations led directly to the assemblages, constructions, and also combine paintings of Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Jean Dubuffet, and Ellsworth Kelly, as well as to their experimental work in the 50′s as well as 60′s. And their own work in turn created the climate for the installations, appropriations, settings, and innovative object works of the eighties and 1990′s.

Mixed media art, drawing from the efforts of early artists, made mixed media an accessible art form for both expert and inexperienced artists. Assemblage and collage can be found combined with acrylic and watercolor painting, rubber-stamped art, sculpture and altered books. Fibers, torn papers, inks, glitter and beads are finding their way into works of fine art as well as commercial pieces including greeting cards and quilts. The destiny of mixed media, it appears, is bound only by the imagination of artists and anything they can get their hands on.