Friday, January 24, 2014

Bundle of Dreams

I love that Lynn sent me a photo she snapped after opening her birthday gift. I had as much fun wrapping it all as she had opening it.


Thursday, January 23, 2014

Gather Your Dreams

First finished piece of the new year. Mixed-media collage made as a birthday gift for one of my oldest friends. Vintage papers, acrylic paint, colored pencil and image transfers on an upcycled child's board book page. 8" x 9"

This piece was a really fun one because I just let it lead me along. I had done another collage painting with the bare tree image with the triple spheres and had a basic notion of using that design again. In terms of choosing the other images and text, it started out as a random process… not thinking about it, just DOING it. Then a theme started surfacing… sleep and dreams. Only after I had filled in the large circle with a light blue wash of color, and wrote the word "dream" above it, I noticed that the text in the under layer said, "Where was she?" The next lines are partially obscured but say, "Awake or dreaming?" Did I pick that up subliminally?
 I wasn't trying for perfection… just seeing what came through and trusting it. It intentionally turned out a bit like an art journal page, rather than a "piece of art". I love the motion of the curved lines and arrows in the pattern tissue… and the flock of swallows. The birds are an image from an old children's book that I've been saving for a long time for just the right project. Feels good to be working like this again. More to come!