Previously Unseen
Digital collage finished today! A wee preview of what to expect at Spring Fling and a blog talking about the process.
Once I get into a groove in a project, I find it easier to carry on. My process is usually that I start off badly, struggle for weeks, suddenly have a huge lightbulb moment and then breeze through the rest. It’s almost like I have to embrace failure and learn from it before I can make progress.
I can apply this to my entire life. Relationships that I came off worse in hardened me to expect more from the next relationship. I think that I knew that my first marriage was doomed on my wedding day, probably even before that, but I had to go through the hurt and sadness to find the joy of a second marriage. There were things I needed to collect; my children (most importantly), my understanding of what a marriage shouldn’t be like and some good memories that I needed to keep so that I didn’t think the experience was all bad.
So it’s no surprise to me that I have to apply this ‘suffering’ to the creation of art.
The last few collages have appeared with ease, after the first ones struggled to be born. I now know what won’t work. I know which textured layers will work well with others. I know the palette I want and use painted layers to support that.
So here for you (before the rest of the world see it) is the collage I completed today:
When we moved into our present house I discovered some extremely old wallpaper on the walls in the loft. The loft had a fireplace at each end and I would imagine was lived in years ago, when more than one family might have lived in the house. The wallpaper was stuck everywhere in an effort, I think, to make the room look better. It was even on the beams.
Before my husband removed it, I photographed it. I had no idea that I would be using it for this project six years later, but there you go. Today it formed a part of ‘The Bee’ collage, which uses these daisy like flowers photographed at Threave Gardens in nearby Castle Douglas. It’s very different from the others I’ve done and I like it for that reason. The bee you have to hunt for. He/She is there, added in a layer of its own so that I could work on it separate to the flowers.
I have one more image to complete. I did one today, a seascape, but I needed to leave it and return to it tomorrow. I want to see how I feel about it after a night’s sleep. All part of the process!
My art is my patchwork, but sometimes I need to cogitate on a piece, not by thinking about it directly but by doing another bit of a different project, this freeing up of the mind gives me space for the ‘light bulb , ah ha moment of clarity fir the way forward in the first piece. I needed to add another ‘carp’ to fill an annoying ‘space on a centre panel, all the carp are ‘coming together’ ( the design. Is called Karma) I suddenly realised that just the tail of an other fish was better than a head, swimming away from the rest of the fish, going its own way,doing it own thing! I can relate to that fish!