Sunday, May 09, 2010

Barn

Barn
5x7
Daily Collage

My collages aren't so daily while we travel. I don't have an easy setup for collage like I do at home where everything I need is all in one spot and I am making do with whatever papers I gather. (This photo bit is of a barn in Oregon.) At the end of a long day the last thing I want to do is make a collage. However, an afternoon looking at art in the galleries along Canyon Road in Santa Fe got the creative juices flowing. I saw lots of good art and even more of the other kind. 

Sometimes that's really good, looking at the work of other artists, but I worry that seeing what other people do so well might undermine my own individual approach to working. I kept saying to myself, "that's a good idea; I could do something like that, too." But when it comes down to working in an honest way I know I'll have to let it all perk and somehow find my own way to make my unique statement with the art I make. This looking is just another form of study that will be added to what I already know and feel and hopefully what I make in the future won't look like anyone's work but my own.

We've seen so many beautiful places under wide open sunny skies; I know that future work will be heavily inspired by the colors and forms of the southwestern landscape.


Saturday, May 08, 2010

Tent Rocks

Tent Rocks
5x7 collage

A few miles west of Santa Fe and way out in the wilderness is a BLM park called Tent Rocks, so called because of the shape of the hoodoos, formed by many centuries of erosion. Where large dense rocks shelter the softer rock below, these triangular shapes are formed, some inches high and some 70 feet or more. I was inspired to make this little collage sketch.

Saturday, May 01, 2010

SouthWest Road Trip

Roots

We're on a road trip, heading south, and since I choose to take limited collage materials I'm making do with what comes to hand. I found this photo of a tree in southern France from a few years back and combined it with some maps that I picked up along the way. The highway map reminds me of  the root system of trees in  a harsh desert climate as they reach deeper and deeper to find the water they need to survive. 

Water falls into the deep canyon of Zion National Park where it nourishes the trees along the river.


Snow fell on us the day we were in Bryce Canyon in southern Utah.