Process Papers Yet Again

One part of my process that took a while to develop is how I start a piece.

When I first started doing collages on canvas, I used to only cover the actual front surface of the collage with my creation.  This meant that the sides were plain and white, and after a while I realized that this was rather ugly and wasting space that could be prettied up.

I tried to amend this by painting the sides of the collage with colors that sort of matched the collage itself.  This looked even worse.  Sometimes the colors did match, but often they were off just enough to ruin the effect of the whole piece.

Eventually, my cousin Jan Lawson, a great artist herself, said to me, "Why don't you just extend the collage out over to the edges?"

DUH!

Why had I not seen this before?  It made perfect sense.  I often had extra paper hanging over the sides that I used to just cut off.  Now I could feel free to glue that paper on to the sides and it would extend the design and, I hope, heighten the appeal.

I've extended that further.  Rather than add the collage design to a blank white canvas, I've been covering the entire canvas with a sheet of handmade paper with a color that compliments the piece I plan to make.  This is what I mean

The base of this collage was originally a piece I'd shown in a pop up exhibition honoring my home town.  A few weeks later, I looked at that piece again and realized it just didn't work.  In truth, I cringed at the sight of it.  It just looked so awful.

So I removed what parts of the collage I could save, and just left the canvas to sit for a while until I decided what to do with it.  Close to a year actually.

So then I restarted the piece by covering it with a sort of bronzy paper that I just love and can no longer find.  (Sorry about the photo)

Then I started to add paper that I'd picked out earlier when I was figuring out what to make.

It really is trial and error.  Some things work, others don't.  I have the option to change it until I glue it down, and even then I can cover it over if I don't like it.  But usually I test drive the stuff until I am ready to use the glue.

I had had several images of people I wanted to use at the beginning, but I found this photograph in a bin of photos at an antique shop in Bristol, and really liked the woman's face, so she was the one for me.  

As you can see, I continued to add elements after the previous photo, and came up with something I like quite a lot.  I'm hanging it in the Member section of the Mill Gallery, run by the Pawtucket Arts Collaborative - a perk of being a Gallery volunteer.  

By the way, you may have noticed that this collage doesn't have one of my usual tag lines.  I considered adding one, but decided that it worked without it and actually, I think, a tag line would have spoiled it.  

Do you agree?

later,
lin