Collage - A Challenging Artform

I'm back. Life does take some difficult turns and the past two years have been tough. I'm enjoying creating again, but with constraints. Collage. You work within the limits of the materials you choose, especially with regard to texture, colour, line and shape. It's wonderful, and wonderfully frustrating. For an anal retentive/obsessive compulsive person like myself, this forces me to make decisions quickly and to do what is needed to make something work. So far I have 5, and one in collaboration with another artist, S. Pakosh. I find these tremendously gratifying and seriously addictive. When I get settled, I'll take and post pictures of the processes of future pieces as well.

The start:

start

The finished piece:

Cravings

Collage is experiencing an incredible surge in popularity; it resonates with the viewer on so many levels, regardless of the approach, perhaps for several reasons.

1. Our recycle/upcycle generation loves the idea of items that would ordinarily be discarded finding purpose again.
2. There is a bit of grittiness due to the fact that edges are torn and some are cut and the piece is glued down. Paper doesn't glue down seamlessly, usually. Bubbles, creases, frayed edges, all attain interest beyond their surface appeal.
3. Gluing, cutting, tearing all evoke memories of childhood, a time when societal constraints did not dictate our perceptions of our talents; a time when we were brilliant in our own estimations.
4. Some materials used harken back to a simpler time, with memories of a world that was less stressful.
5. For all of the above reasons, the mark of the artist is always present, along with, often, a hint of a fingerprint! Collage is not made solely with a brush! It is a tactile process and the viewer is given a front row seat to the hands-on efforts of the artist.

I would love to hear your thoughts on this.

Calm Before the Storm - Collaged Abstract Painting

I'm under a lot of stress (who isn't these days?) and flying by the seat of my pants the way I do when I paint gets very tiring when you have no idea of where you'll start or what you'll use as far as material, paint, substrate, colour is concerned. I need to work in series, but to do that I need to be in my chair regularly. Right now that's not possible, so I'm going to do up 10 starts, ONLY STARTS, so I have a sense of continuity when I get into the studio.

I can see that I need more discipline. By the time I remembered to take a photo, here is what had happened to my first start - and, no, there are no more starts, but I do have a nice little collage, framed. Aaargh!!!

Next studio day I will do 10 starts..... yup!

Untitled Abstract Process Painting

Unfinished and Untitled

I'm back in the studio, painting, starting to find myself again and it feels wonderful. I don't want to knuckle down to hard work (read "making real serious art") yet so start playing experimenting. This time I've decided to go whole hog: I pull out a sheet of Arches cold press 140 lb! How's that for wanton disregard for cost?!!!

I decide to do a monoprint, starting with black india ink, new drawing sticks I found at Omer Deserres (they're from china - make really nice, intensely black marks when first dipped in water), my trusty Woody, graphite (water-soluble), water, splash around with a lovely cat's tongue brush, throw in some powdered yellow ochre pigment (also a bit of ultramarine in the lower left but it quickly dissipates). This is all put on a taped-down white garbage bag. Everything is beading up - I'm brushing with one hand, paper at the ready in the other hand - flip the paper over and pull the print. I quickly pull the ghost on a sheet of Stonehenge 90 pound. I'll save the ghost for another time.

I'm into a blue phase and working with a lot of chaos, so minimizing my colour palette seems a very wise choice (yeah, I know, I'm lazy) Now it's the fun stuff, mark-making, stamping, drawing, more collage, letting my right brain have free rein in deciding what to keep, what to veil, what to obliterate. Dance with my brush a bit (we needed to get reacquainted). There are a lot of things in here that are becoming precious but I decide I don't have to prove anything by destroying them, so I leave them for now. I can always alter/remove them later if I feel the need to. The powder ocher has left some wonderfully textured areas. They'll be a nice reward to the viewer who moves in for a closer look.

Creating focal areas with nice golden shapes and more agitated line-work, brightening, calming the chaos in inappropriate areas, the number "5" became really important and I like it there. Hmmmm, need to live with it for a while and see what else it needs. I'm feeling the whiter area bottom centre may be a bit distracting, but I really like it (lots of the original monoprinted ink wash still shows there). Maybe I'll move some more light over to the left a bit - hmmmm.

Painting Abstract Art With Intent

Living on the Edge

It's a challenge to enter the studio and act like you know what you're doing when you haven't pushed paint around for a while. Being a post-war baby means I have a real problem "wasting" material. I decide I'll work on a piece that was an experiment to start with (Sydney and I threw all kinds of acrylics on paper to experiment with their properties. Sydney's into magenta and phthalo green - I'm into muted, greyed down, black, grey). Pulling something out of a piece that two different personalities have worked on is difficult, so I wimped out and decided to experiment further by using this as the basis for overpainting with the intent of altering the existing "stuff", not obliterating it.

I first unified the painting by using gesso veils and washes, leaving some brilliant gems untouched. Then randomly glazing over with warm yellows (transparent yellow and red oxides, quin gold) then picking out some structure using black gesso, brushing, stamping, and collage.

I must have then made the right brain shift because the next thing I remember is looking at the above and thinking, "Oops! I forgot to take photos along the way!" Sorry about that. I'll try to explain. Click on the image and you'll get a better look. I basically started to respond to each decision, letting what was happening guide me to say, "Hey, what if...." so I veiled out the lower part gradually, scraping back, blotting, scratching out, writing into, to make an interesting surface. Then added more collage (upper left, center black), a bit more black gesso painted, black mark-making with Woody, prismacolor, then veiled the top with cerulean blue knocked back with black, greyed out, over-painted darker, blotted, scratched out.

Final touches after walking around with it for a couple of days: warmed up the yellow areas in spots, brought a bit of greyed lavander into the lower white middle to pick up some of the still bright magenta/violet peeking through the mid right and the veiled middle square, brightened the white squares in the black "building" in the middle to make it look painterly rather than just collaged and changed the lower right "window" to eliminate the symmetry in the piece. This work has such a cityscape feel that I added the three little abstract birds in the blue to the left of the black middle.

It has a good feel to it - gritty, decaying, precarious - just the way I like it!

More on the Subject of Painting the Energy of a World Class City

East End

This city hums with energy. You step out your door and feel it immediately. Your pace picks up, your senses are on high alert and there's eye candy everywhere you look. The architecture, the terrasses, the cafes, the people, the dogs, the storefronts, the traffic - it's constant and pervasive and you bring it back to the studio with you. There's no painting sylvan landscapes or pretty flowers. The brush dances across the canvas and the haunting memory of glimpses of graffiti pervade the imagery.

A Photo of Urban Infrastructure in Better Light

Angst! and The Process of Painting Abstract Paintings

It's been a year and after all the work with polymer, I need to pick up a paintbrush. It's been so long I need to re-acquaint myself with my media and my tools, so I pick up a piece of 65 lb. drawing paper, deciding ahead of time that my painting will be a failure and not wanting to waste good paper! I play and engage in the delightful initial creative dance, with no expectations - just making marks. Before long I'm kicking myself for using "difficult" paper (it does not respond well to water) because I'm liking what's happening. Then I realize that what's happening has the same feel and impact as what I left off with. Now what?!!! I didn't even want to look at the other piece for a whole year! I talk it over with my muse and come to some important realizations/reminders:

• I have been trying to force myself on these paintings, trying to get them to look a predetermined "way"
• I have made a decision ahead of time to "say more with less"
• By choosing inferior materials I have rejected my work before it has even begun
• The very existence of a work justifies its existence - I don't have to excuse it
• I have a lot to say and, dag nab it, if I want to blurt it out in one fell swoop, so be it!
• This is who I am - I don't have to pretend to be anyone else - I am good enough
• I have been saying "I trust the process" and then been trying to tell the "process" how it should proceed

Interestingly, after this period of agonizing I have a desire to see last year's unfinished piece. I look at it and find it intriguing. I name it "Urban Infrastructure". I can now analyze what I feel is not working and make decisions, one at a time, to bring it to completion.
The feeling of movement is good and the colours work. It is too bland in the light areas when compared to the graphic impact of the dark, so the light areas need to be "grittier". I want the "vortex" in the upper right diminished a lot, but a faint shadow to remain, reminding me of the process. I need to connect some areas since the black is so solid and dominant, appearing as walls in some areas. I use some different "bridging" techniques to accomplish this, including stamping and palette knife.

I'll live with it for a couple of weeks and see if more touches are needed. I already see the white going up to the upper edge on the left needs to be knocked back a bit and I may need to adjust the colour on the upper right edge, but that may be due to photographing this in the evening. I'll take a better picture in daylight and we'll see.

This painting is exactly what I need right now. It will be fodder for at least the next 40 paintings! As this develops, I'll show you what I'll be doing and how you can use your paintings to inspire new work that gives you a cohesive body of work.