Collage - Reflection
During the first lockdown I made some collages with my daughters, using their instructions. I enjoyed the process and the outcome, especially compared to my attempts at collage. Mine were laborious and dull using tiny pieces of wallpaper (taking a lead from Picasso's war time artworks) where as the children's version were fun and light, they looked much more dynamic.
I have been drawn to collage ever since. I sometime feel it is cheating! A hangover from school I'm sure when your work was judged on how many hours it took to paint or draw your artwork. I have since seen the light and see it for the valued art form it is.
The House project was planned to include many mediums, like the Patrick Keiller exhibition at the Tate in 2012 (previously mentioned in blog post 18th December 2020). Collage was one of the mediums I wanted to explore. I had a clear idea of the base image being the side view of the House. I layered images from my childhood settings from my primary school to the local shops. I felt this worked well but it needed depth. I wanted to add colour illustrations as a contrast to the black and white nostalgic images. Local flowers and wildlife I hunted for on my walks around the site of the House and it's park land.
I always remember as a child spotting a flash of purple in the grass and rushing over to it. Was it a harebell? Or an orchid? Maybe purple vetch? I had seem all these flowers in my beloved wildflower books. But when I got there it was a Cadburys wrapper. I don't know why it has stuck with me, its funny and sad at the same time.
Anyway, maybe thats what took me on to train as a botanical illustrator as an adult. I decided to use my illustrations as the colour images for my collage. They were printed on card which was a bit too thick to add to the photographs and in a rush I didn't fully cut out the images, leaving some with a white border. I realised this is a huge mistake on a collage. To get the layered effect and depth I wanted the image need to sit seamlessly on the photographs. I submitted the collage to the winter show but knew I could improve the image.
At a later date I decided to remove the illustrations and used images from an image bank magazine. I still featured British flora and fauna but I decided it didn't have to be illustrations I had created myself. I think in my mind I had felt they need to be my illustrations to show I had spent time on the collage, to give it gravitas. I think this is part of the letting go of the idea that art is only valuable if it is the format of old masters, laboured over for hours.
The outcome is better than my first attempt. Although with collage I seem to think I can keep improving and changing the final piece. I have decided to add more images and change a few too. I will post a work in progress soon.
I am still drawn to collage and I am working in collage for a hospital project I am working on. It is for Charing Cross hospital, breast care care waiting room and the theme is 'Hope'. This is a more successful artwork because I went straight to using found images rather than my own illustrations. I keep the work to the same weight paper and I used spray mount rather than PVA glue. This created a smooth flat surface and was easier to place and move if necessary. In addition I layered underneath some sections of screen printed yellow. I felt this was successful because of the stark contrast to the photographic images. I think the rough screen printed edges create interesting shapes and the colour yellow, which all 6 artists used in their artworks ties the work together as a group.
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