Weathering the Storms

High Seas, Rough Weather. 2025 10 x 10cm collage on canvas board.

I’ve been taking time out making collages again. It’s the perfect in-between activity when you have finished one project and are stuck on a problem with the next.

Collage is play. It helps to get you through rough patches, the stormy seas and bad weather that can threaten to capsize your little creative boat.

It’s all tearing up papers and messy glue. A bit tumultuous and turbulent. There’s never any right or wrong with collage, it’s all about the ‘feel’ of how the elements fit together. Sometimes I will create a whole collage, then tear it up as well to create a new one with the pieces.

This week I finished my Tasmanian forest artworks which are at the framers in readiness for the Art for Takayma exhibition in Hobart next month. So it was time to turn to the next project which is a scroll book (or two for) the Papermakers and Artists Queensland exhibition later in the year.

I’ve tried several iterations of a scroll book and none have completely satisfied me. Instead of getting frustrated, I put aside the scroll of paper that wasn’t working and turned to some old prints which I had started collaging onto small canvas boards.

At first glance they were finished. Yet they didn’t ‘speak’ to me. They needed a story, an emotion, some tale to drag me in and keep me interested. I decided to utilise my new skill in teasing out kozo fibres and pulled apart some painted kozo papers.

They collaged beautifully. Little by little the story took shape. I came home from the beach where the rough seas post Cyclone Alfred have made swimming impossible for the past two months. There is debris everywhere and all the rain has turned the creek muddy. 

Here then, was the title and with it excitement at having resolved the artwork. Blue fibres became the rough seas, pounding at the breakwater wall. It’s part of a trilogy bookended by the sun and moon which are still unfinished. Perhaps they are part of a new story or both have a part to play in this preoccupation with the weather.

By the time I finish them, I will be able to return to the scroll books with hopefully a new insight into their stories as well. One thing leads to the other…

Works in progress of my collage trilogy.