Jo Reimer, an artist, living and working in Portland Oregon
Wednesday, November 09, 2011
Split Complementary Colors
12" x 15" Collage
This collage was an experiment with color. I chose the red/green complementary colors and then did a split, adding blue green and yellow green.. and then I played with the design until this evolved.
The papers are my own painted papers with only one strip of a commercial paper.
Titles can be difficult, especially one that describes an abstract collage. If I was a poet I could write a poem that fits, but I'm not. So often the collages are simply attractive compositions, and that's perfectly all right.
This acrylic painting was done on a cradled 12x12" canvas.
Our back yard is filled with beautiful trees, many of which are Japanese Maples that we grow at our nursery. The Sango Kaku, aka Coral Bark Maple, is amazing any time of the year with green gold leaves in spring and summer, turning yellow and then coral in autumn. Then after the leaves drop the twigs and branches turn bright coral red to brighten our winter landscape.
I stare at the tree from my studio and kitchen windows and have taken several photos over the years. Finally I decided to paint it. Why render an exact copy in paint? That's not my kind of art. So I set out to paint my feelings about the tree. When I finished I thought I had failed, but today I realize that I managed to capture the essence of the tree. A burst of yellow orange. Accents of bright rusty orangey red at the edges. The afternoon light striking the leaves, making them glow. Coral bark. Blue sky reflected in the pond.
I'm not so sure about the underlying grid... but that's part of my history and way of working. So there!
I'm struck by the vivid colors of Oregon this autumn. The sky is such a clear blue and the sunsets colors are reflected in puddles and ponds.
Her Shadow 6x6 Collage Painting
Here I've used a photocopy of one of my shadow self-portraits along with some painted papers. Collage is so much easier and more interesting when one starts with painted papers. There's a complexity inherent in the papers that's simply not achievable with direct painting... and it's great fun, too. It appeals to the quilter/embroiderer in me and as a friend observed, I do like putting things together to make art.
Sweet Sixteen 7x7 Collage painting
Linda, I'm sure you recognize the paper in the lower left corner. Years ago Linda and I spent some days painting fabric with hand cut stamps, stencils and whatever came to hand, and we were smart enough to lift some prints onto paper before the paint dried.
I'm sorry to see the last bit of that paper be used, but some time ago I lectured myself about the dangers of seeing art supplies as precious... saving them for some later use instead of using the best you have to create the best work you can in the present time.
After reading a recent post by Martha Marshall about painting magazine pages to use for collage I decided to spend a few hours with my pot of gesso and a few decorating magazines. I ended up with a big stack of interesting paper which, coupled with some of my painted tissue papers, are great fun to use. I called this one "After the Storm" because it reminds me of dark skies and whirling winds contrasted with blue sky and autumn color breaking through.
I particularly like this method of concealing the images on the original pages and changing them into something that shows my own hand at work, yet takes advantage of the ink colors.
(I'm having trouble with Blogger so I couldn't add the size to the caption... It's 6.5" x 8", matted in an 8x10 mat.)
I've had success with keeping a few different sized mats near my collage table to audition the art I'm making. As I work I view the piece through a mat window and it give me a good sense of what work is still needed or whether I'm finished.
While working on the Sketchbook Project last year I developed several ways to use my own photographs in my collages. This is one approach.
The little photo is of a stone diving platform in the lake where I swam as a teenager.
I chose papers in colors that echo those in the photo and then tore them to build the collage, using deli paper as my substrate. After trimming it to size I mounted it on board, ready to hang. The photo acts as the focal point in the composition.
Most of the papers are from my stack of hand painted papers. In future posts I'll show you a few other ways I've used photographs.
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It's fun to be back to making whimsical collages. It feels like play. Making a small collage gets the creative juices flowing and sets me up for other work. It's especially gratifying when I mount them on larger mounting boards, frame them, and see how great they look on the wall.
Saturday my husband helped hang 30 of my sermon notes at church and they look fabulous, though slightly dwarfed by the big building and high ceilings. There are 6 areas where the special hanging system has been installed with just enough space for 5 collage paintings in each area with plenty of room for people to get up close. I will take pictures soon.
There's a lot of thinking going on around the One A Day studio. I'm sure that change is coming but where I'll take this blog isn't at all certain. It seems that I am not capable of keeping to a schedule like many of the bloggers I admire... my writing happens when I feel like it, when I have time for it, when I have something to share.
I'm preparing 30 of my Sermon Notes collage paintings for a solo exhibit at my church. It starts Sunday and will be on the foyer walls until February. I wish you could all come see it, but I will take some pictures and post them here. The church has invested in a hanging system so that art can be easily hung on the stone walls and we have an enthusiastic art director who will see that more artists have an opportunity to share their work as well as talk about why we work as we do.
Some of my newer collages are 6"x 6", but I'm making other sizes as the subject demands. I'll be offering some of them for sale on this blog. I've experimented with using deli wrap as my substrate, gluing the papers to the surface and trimming the work when I'm done, then mounting the collage on board or heavy papers. Both wet and dry adhesives seem to work well with this backing. Here are a couple of the newer ones in the Dwelling series.
A week after 9-11-2002 I participated in a collage workshop at Sitka Center on the Oregon Coast. I was still reeling from the enormity of the terrorist attacks, from the images I had seen on my television; I think of nothing else, so three of the first pieces I made that week referenced the events.
I used one of my "writing that can't be read" sheets as the background, to represent the debris-filled skies. A striped paper referenced the walls of the World Trade Center, standing and falling. Bingo cards referred to the numbers of the floor and to elevators. And of course, there's the fire and the smoke, and the pain of loss.
I love to watch other people sketch almost as much as I like to do it and as I watched this video I made several observations that might help you on your next sketch outing. You DO sketch, don't you?
Use a 7-day pill container to hold your paints
Use a sea shell for water supply.
Note that most people use a waterbrush. Available at art and hobby stores, the barrel holds water, or ink.
A small amount of paint is enough to explain the colors; don't over-work the color.
Notice the different sizes of sketchbooks; one person uses single sheets of paper clipped to a backing board.
Notice how people hold their pen while sketching; notice how carefully and often they look at their subject.
Joining a group like Urban Sketchers for a day looking at your community is lots of fun.
