New Year, New Start, New Word
Abundance
My word for the year is abundance.
With every choice made in my art I want this word, abundance, informing my decisions.
For me, abundance means to make more work, work that is finished or not, it doesn’t really matter. My word of the year also means that the work is larger than my previous work, both in volume and in scale.
To accomplish this working quickly and making faster decisions is key.
An art teacher once who told me, after seeing a small collage of mine, "make 50 of them". What I learned from following her advice is to work in a series, without finishing any one of the pieces too quickly. Perhaps more importantly I learned what resonated with me as the project and the work developed. Becoming more aware of my own sensibilities while making, I could work those insights back into the earlier pieces of the series.
Abundance means to dive more deeply into a single idea in my work and spend my time exploring it without feeling the need to move on to something else: Spend more time with one idea to see where it leads my curiosity.
Abundance also leads me to explore different kinds of material in my mixed media work, not only paint and paper.
Do more of what resonates.
For the past couple of years my art practice has been devoted to painting. And what I’ve learned is that an natural painter, I am not.
Vol. 3 no. 1 Falconry , fencing, finance to Finland, 2011. A collage made of imagery from an old encyclopedia
Paint brings a nearly endless choice of colour to any project and I enjoy the variety of surface interest that can be achieved with paint.
I have thought, in the past, that to be “a real artist” one must paint.
But what really makes me happy is not painting but collage. It's the process of finding or making source material, cutting and arranging disparate materials together in a way that excites and intrigues.
I have completed a few pure collage projects in the past starting with my final project for my BFA that is called Falconry, fencing, finance to Finland.
My source material was a collection of old encyclopedia from which 36 collages were made, each one devoted to a single volume of the collection.
The resulting collages are quirky and fun and a kind of metaphor for the content of each volume.
The project was a pleasure to do and to complete. I remember, while in the midst of working, having a feeling of calm, knowing that the work would lead to something eloquent and beautiful without knowing the how of it.
It was a very comfortable place to reside.
My second collage project entitled Found Again, is a collection of found paper collages, mostly paper from magazines, that explores the familiar transformed into the inexplicable.
Again I didn’t know where the project was going but my curiosity drove the process and I felt confident in the making. The resultant work is rich with colour, detail and nuance and a keen reflection of my taste and interests.
The work of making a collage, an analogue collage, the hands on manipulation and the tactile quality of the materials appeals to my sensibilities and temperament.
But the process, however, has its own challenges, not the least of which is the physical toll that cutting and pasting such intricate work takes. I can no longer work that way with materials so small, but am still drawn to the process.
So the question is how to proceed with what resonates (collage), incorporating what I have learned about the painted surface, and in an abundant manner and scale?
As a mixed media artist I want to further explore the incorporation of paint and collage in my work with the collage element taking a more prominent role.
While I don’t have all of the answers, I have a few ideas.
Use more collage papers in a variety of weights, transparencies and surface finishes. This means taking the time needed to prepare these materials.
Explore fabric as an element in my mixed media work. Is the fabric whole or distressed in some way?
Experiment more with sewing into paper and fabric as part of my process. Is the stitching by hand or machine?
Collect and manipulate found, three dimensional materials to introduce into my work.
Delay “finishing” any one piece to allow room for new insights to be introduced. Patience.
Make a lot of art, doubling down on the “make 50 of them” challenge.
Who knows what joys and challenges the next year will bring in my art practice?
I have my word, abundance, and with it as a guiding force, a vision for what I want to accomplish and how I want to approach my practice. And a plan, a loose plan, but for right now, at the beginning of this new year, that’s good enough for me.
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