Rose City... collage

by Jo Reimer

Rose City
8.5 x 11
collage

It's the last day of 2011 and I'm turning over a new leaf, trying to be a bit more organized about posting to my blog. I get caught up in making art and keeping house and simply forget to post, though I love to write and to share what I'm doing with my faithful readers. If you miss my presence please shoot me an email and remind me to contribute something to this blog.  

I've been at work creating my online shop on etsy where I'll offer original artwork for sale. Won't you please head over to Hilltop Artworks and see what I've posted so far?  There's not much listed yet but my aim is to spend several hours each week posting more things for sale.

Cut and Come Again ... Collage

Cut and Come Again
16 x 20"
Fabric, Paper, Stitching on Canvas

Cut and Come Again, detail

I'm continuing my experiments with marrying the idea of piecing quilts with collage. In Cut and Come Again I composed the design using a mixture of paper and fabric to create the feeling of a summertime zinnia from my garden. The substrate is canvas. No glue was used except for a spot here and there to tack the elements in place until they were stitched.

I Have Reasons
11 x 15"
Collage on Paper
SOLD

I started with a collage of previously painted papers and then applied layers of acrylic paint to add depth and texture.

Elegans
Collage and Acrylic on Panel
12 x 12"

Working directly on Gessobord panel I painted on top of a collage of painted papers.

Winter Elk Sighting
Collage on Canvas Panel
11 x 14"

The various white papers that depict a snowy winter storm are gesso on magazine papers. The elk red-on-black images are from a commercial paper.

Edge of Winter... collage painting

by Jo Reimer

Edge of Winter

9 x 12 collage

 

Although I've shot many dozen photographs at the Oregon Coast I added lots more to my collection last weekend. The light was incredible on a late winter afternoon. Here's what it looks like in my part of the world:

 

An Intro to Piecings... collage paintings

by Jo Reimer

Complements

I've been exploring another approach to collage, in a series I'm calling "Piecings". That's just what these collage paintings are... pieces of paper, most cut into geometric shapes and assembled, like when I made quilts from cut pieces of fabric. (This collage is 9 x 12".)

The focal strip was composed by creating a collage of long stripes which I then cut across the grain to create stripes of small rectangles.

Quilters often use a similar technique, especially within the Seminole Patchwork tradition where several stripes of colors are created and then cut apart and rearranged to create a pattern as shown here. The technique is thoroughly explained in The Complete Book of Seminole Patchwork, written by two friends of mine, Bev Rush and Lassie Wittman.

I seem most comfortable with pieces of color which I can move around to create a pleasing composition, rather than starting from scratch with a white substrate and an assortment of paints and brushes. Of course these papers started out white but first I had fun applying paint to paper, creating visual texture in a variety of ways. 

Another advantage of using some of the thinner papers I've prepared as well as washi, is that I can work with layering, like the blue area above which is a commercial thin "rice"paper layered over a paper which I painted with a grid, adding visual interest and complexity to a simple design.