Collage Inspiration

"International Collage Day" is fast approaching on May 14th, and I have invited a few friends over to have an art-day cutting and pasting collages.

 "Where do you get the inspiration for your collage?" That's a question people sometimes ask me; the answer is rarely the same. 

If you are looking through my art blog, or click on "READ MORE" you'll find it can be a simple as a drive to Hilo on  grey, drizzly day, a book I have read, or something from the news such as the January 6th insurrection. Dealing with my emotional response to a "former president" was instrumental in several collages as was dealing with Covid. 

One interesting source of frequent inspiration is having to file hundreds of pages of torn-out pages from various magazines. Sometimes it's a color that flags my attention, more often it is a texture or pattern. "Sourcing" is great for days when there's a void in between collages and on any given in-door day I can end up with dozens of cut out pieces or whole pages. 

These assortments of potential inspiration stack up day after day until the mound threatens to slip-slid off my table and land askew on the floor. Hence the need for "FILING" -- and that's where some of the most unlikely inspiration arises. The other day, while going through another pile to sort by color, size, background, topic or texture I came across this grouping of yummy colors that screamed to "be something" ELSE. That day I had also picked a couple "Cosmic Dancer" hibiscus so all these elements connected to join in the fun. I drew out a geometric design as a possible template and began moving the images and colors around. I also created a set of "stripes" with all the colors that could be worked into the patterns.

Days of fussing, cutting, gluing and rearranging resulted in this 20x30" collage entitled "Cosmic Dream "... I hope you are able to enlarge it to see the details.