I’ve always felt comfortable with collage. There is no pressure to get anything perfect and great satisfaction in tearing up pieces of paper to create a new composition. My mantra was always tear not cut.
This week however, I tried something different. Taking inspiration from the silhouette collages of Mark Hearld, I tried drawing a stylised shape of a tree and some branches on the back on one of the paste papers I recently made. Then I brought out the scissors and started cutting.
It felt decidedly weird cutting out shapes to create a silhouette form. It was all about sharp edges with no torn jagged bits to break the lines. The tree shapes felt naked and stark, although I loved the paste paper ‘textures’ of the bark. I tried them out at first on a sheet of handmade kozo paper, but realised the two types of hard edge/soft edge weren’t ‘singing’ harmoniously.
I put the work aside until the next day as I needed green paste papers for the background. I was drawing inspiration from my photos taken in Takayna, Tasmania from inside the green cathedral of old growth forest. The light was dappled, the sun creating a pathway luring you further into the forest depths.
I brought out yellow and green paint and added the corn starch to them, using a palette knife to spread the colours. When dry the green was perfect to tear into two halves for the forest background. I laid the tree silhouettes on top and could see the piece taking shape.
It was a slow process. For someone who is used to ‘knocking out’ collages every day, this steady building up of layers over several days was quite a test of faith and endurance. I had to keep coming back to it each morning with fresh eyes to see what it needed next.
The foreground of tree leaves needed special attention. I tried cutting out leaf shapes. Apart from this being incredibly fiddly, it was too structured for my liking. I returned to inking up some torn pieces of soft kozo paper and glued the pulled apart fibres around the tree branches. It worked!
I realised that I am becoming confident with these new techniques I have been trialling for the past months, using kozo fibres for collage and adding them to compositions. It feels like I have broken through into the mixed media category, finding a way to paint without picking up a paintbrush!
It’s like going around the edges of a problem, circling ever closer to its core. No conflict, instead a gentle erosion of my self doubts about my ability to paint. Using different ways to apply colour has allowed me to banish the thought that I’m not a painter. I’m working up the courage to try out a bigger collage and mixed media composition of forest scenes. Who knows where it will lead.
Cut out paste papers trees on kozo paper
Arranging the layers of collage papers