April Breeze

April Breeze (Sold)
...April is moody and erratic, but I love her anyway. Acrylic collage painting on heavy archival paper, 11 x 15 inches, image size 9.25 x 11 inches.

 

In these collages I prefer to use old papers. I saved some papers from my teaching years. I'd often ask my students to prepare idea lists and preparatory drawings at the start of projects. These idea pages would be stapled together and kept on shelves in the studio for their reference the next class. Few students ever claimed these prep things at the end of the year, and in June there would be piles of things to throw out. When I started making these collages I'd sometimes save the used 8.5 x 11 inch papers in stacks. I still have a bit of this left. I'm often very charmed by the things I see on these pages.....little bits of history that are both insignificant and endearing when put into a different context. Our days are fleeting...and it's sweet if some little hint of our time here can survive. In this piece, at extreme left by the horizon, you see a star/asterisk entered in ballpoint pen. That was where a Grade 9 student wrote her name, and a punctuating symbol afterward. I don't know why that charms me....but it does to no end. Little hints that we were here....left behind...but largely invisible....

You'd be surprised how the stacks of old paper mount up after years of teaching....piles of old photocopied project sheets, assignment sheets....I left a lot of that behind and have used up much of what I've saved for collage papers....

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