Andrew Young is best known for large paintings using the obscure medium of egg tempera which, because of its technical difficulty, is usually limited to small-scale works. Young has shifted course, however, over the past few years, and is now making small, elegant collage works, using papers onto which he paints with pigments mixed with gum Arabic. His medium has changed, but his proclivity for esoteric methods and materials remains.

Young’s predominantly abstract collages present a playful, sometimes melancholic, quest for a lost sensibility, often feeling like the visual equivalent of a diary. They value what is intimate, delicate, and hand-crafted in a time when society is rushing with headlong speed away from these qualities. Young imbeds images reminiscent of nineteenth century natural history illustrations in a primarily abstract format. He combines allusions to multiple styles, locales, and time periods to make works infused with the history of art. His collages blend a golden “Italianate” palette with an “Oriental” sense of space; they show the influence of early works of European and American abstraction alongside the influence resulting from Young’s time spent in Pakistan at the Lahore National College of Arts. However, despite all of these distinct references and sources, the work presents a coherent and elegantly beautiful whole.

Young’s work has been featured in numerous national and international solo and group exhibitions (New York, Chicago, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Germany, Italy, Costa Rica). He has lectured and taught workshops in Pakistan, Germany, and Ecuador as well as the U.S.