Sometimes the painting process goes haywire, taking with it expensive art supplies. Not one to throw out materials, I prefer to recycle them into new pieces. Case in point, the collage piece, Dancer.
Dancer started as a large watercolor with big ambitions of being lively and vibrant; however, this concept soon descended into a complicated and haphazard blur of tones and textured hues on a beautiful piece of Arches 140 lb. paper.
What to do? I tore and cut into the bedraggled painting, making small shapes that individually have their own charm.
What I'm left with is a big, heaping pile of possibilities.
I put these shapes onto a page, moving them around until they began to 'talk' to each other. Swiftly gluing them in place and producing a batch before I stopped, I put the collages aside for a couple of days.
When I return to them, I see them in a new way. I notice different things and accentuate them with with pen or paint. No one is more surprised than me with the resulting images. It’s almost like I’m chasing glimpses of them in the shadows, trying to cajole them out with line and color.
This is how Dancer came to life, salvaged from a recycled watercolor painting, and is now living with a collector in Colorado.
