Right Side Up, Upside Down

Hello !

Just like always, while I haven't posted in a week, I was still playing in paint and paper.... and working and all the normal stuff. Nothing too exciting except a new baby was born to our family yesterday, but not at my house...LOL.... and nothing too bad going on either.

A couple of nights ago, I didn't have a plan on what to start next, but I had a LOT of small bits of paper where I made other pieces and there is starting to be an over abundance of bits now, so I thought, why don't I just start gluing them randomly to an art board and just see what comes out. At the very least, it could be a background for something else later. I started with the bits that were already surrounding my work area and reasoned that once they were used up, I would grab some from the little containers that I normally keep them in. This way the desk starts getting cleaned up too ! Win-Win I was thinking and so I began.

I intended to cover the whole board, but when I got to this point, I looked away for some reason and when I looked back I thought, oh, wait, maybe this is a finished piece right here and with that I called it done !

There was no rhyme or reason too it, just happily gluing away with the TV going in the background to keep me company.

Now I know "done" is a matter of opinion, just like whether you think something is an actual piece of art or not. I say it's all ok. I think we are all our own art critics. We know what our eye likes and what it doesn't, even if we can't quite explain why or why not. I see a lot of art that sells for a nice fat price that I don't find appealing at all, so I totally get it.

Since these are on the thin art boards, they would be displayed in a frame or on an easel. The only thing I had here that was a 12x12 was an old shadow box, so I put it in that just to get an idea of how it might looked framed. I thought it was pretty neat, although maybe another frame color would enhance it better, not sure. Since shadow boxes have glass, something most collages, acrylics or oil paintings don't need, I found it nearly impossible to get a nice shot of it as the glass picked up reflections of everything around it. In the real, your eyes and brain can filter it out as you focus on the color and design, but unfortunately my little cell phone could not. Still you can kind of get the jist of how it could be.

In the past I had seen some regular abstract paintings that appealed to me that still had a lot of white surrounding whatever other content was there. I kind of liked the open negative space, negative in color that is.

I recently noticed that some collage artists that have been in art a lot longer than me, seem to have taken a turn for the worst in their creations. Hey ! I mean, possibly to MY eyes only, but I just don't understand it exactly. I know once established, which I certainly am not, that you could nearly always tell when some work was theirs. It was not that they were all alike, but they were just certain styles. I also know many artists continue to learn and grow and sometimes go through many different style periods and so, maybe I do understand it a little bit. Thing is, some of their previous work I loved a lot, but their new direction, not so much. Most it just looked like things got messier and unbalanced with color and one collage artist just seems to randomly glue different papers side by side in a row with no color connection or balance, where to my eye, it looks like ZERO effort was made to really compose anything. I found myself thinking "anybody can do what you are doing right now, that takes no skill or experience". Then I also thought that if you have made a name for yourself in art, your work no longer HAS to be good for you to sell it, it just has to have your name on it !! Anyway, I know that all sounds crazy coming from me of little talent, but still, I can't help how I think about what I see.

Isn't it great that the whole world isn't really running on "according to me" ??? ha ha

I have seen some concepts of doing some art a little more minimalist'ish and in the manner of what I said above about being attracted to some art, paint or paint and paper that left some open spaces with white backgrounds, After the previous piece, I decided to do a few small ones as practice to see what come out. For now I have only used pieces of the collage papers that I previously made myself on different types of paper.

This is the first one that I made. It is on a 5x7 canvas board. I haven't done a final seal on it, but that won't really change how it looks so much as it won't leave raw canvas exposed. This is the way I created it.

Later my camera program turned it upside down in one photo and I thought, WELL ! how dare you !?... till I thought, hmmmm, I might like it better upside down. That IS one good thing about a piece of abstract art, any which way your eye likes it better, that's the way it can be for you.

I then made this piece using different papers. It did end up including a piece of a similar pink in it and afterwards I thought ... hmmmmm... two piecs that might make a neat pair, although that was not my intention when I set out to make the second one.

I had one frame here that they would fit in, so I took turns putting each one in it and taking a photo to once again, see what they might look like framed. Not sure these wouldn't also benefit from a different color frame, but for sure they could be a set. This is "night lighting" so they don't look like clean white on the backgrounds, but they really are in the daylight. I also tried to make my collage maker program, put the one on the left, on the right and vice versa, but it refused. I thought they would look more compatable if the darker part of the blue was on the outer edges with them side by side. You'll just have to use your imagination this time though.

Last night I was at it again. Minimal amount of papers, lots of open white background. Like above, I tried to still use some small points of interest in the composition. This is the way I created it.

Once seeing it upside down though, I thought it could be either or.

Here it is auditioning in the same 5x7 frame I used above.

With the deep red/crimson and the bright green, I thought it might look a little Christmasy before I added the black focus points. Maybe it still does, I don't know.

I ran out of the 5x7s I had here last night, so the last one I did is in my journal. Night lighting again, so the page doesn't show as white-white, but in day light, it is.

After I photographed this, I did add a very small splatter of purple in the upper right corner, so this does look a little different now, but I didn't have a good photo so.....

This is the way I created it....

This is it upside down. They both have some appeal to their orientation

I have done other journal pages and started some other pieces, but they are still hanging out to see if they will choose a "finish"

I got out first thing this morning and went to 3 Dollar Generals to see if they had more of the 5x7 canvas boards and came home with about 18 more to play with. That's 3 stores that are not so far from my house and when I go see Mom tomorrow, I will stop at the one near her house and get their's too if they have any.

I'll leave you with this last bit of collage paper I made. It's from a new source for me. It's called "I'm bleeding, quick, grab some tea paper so I can use it in collage".....style. LOL ! At first it only had a couple of little smears on it where I gave myself a shot a couple days ago and one little bead of blood was there. Since I was sitting at the art table, I thought, wait !... lets not let that go to waste ! So it was there with only a tiny bit of blood on it. Today though, as I was changing footwear after I got back home from a short trip out, The top of a previous minor scrap got removed and it bled like crazy ! I jumped up from the side of the bed, hobble bobbled to the living room, scrambled for the bit of tea paper and hobble bobbled back. In the mean time, blood went everywhere. For real it is not that much of a wound to begin with, but anyway, there I sat again on the side of the bed, capturing the pretty red color on my tea paper. I'm a sicko, right? Then of course I cleaned it all up, put some neosporin on a bandaid and covered it all up so I could put my grippy socks on. This will one day be part of a piece of art. Maybe in smaller bits though.

Was that gross?... or just kind of silly?? You KNOW I'm too into this paper art now. DING DONG ! One thing is for sure, I'm NOT dehydrated !

I hope you have all been doing well.

Thanks for stopping over.

Love you !

Jacey