Creating #14 - 29/03/20

Last summer when I worked on #11, I created a collage inspired by the birth of a baby girl at a Pink concert. The materials I used were all shades of pink and the paper I used was actually a painting I'd done on my art course a few years back. In the original painting I had used both pink and red paint mixed with white to create various different shades. By using the collage approach I covered over much of what I disliked about the original piece, leaving some other areas to show through.

My children loved the idea of me doing similar mixed media pieces for all colours of the rainbow and I also thought that a black, white and grey piece would be interesting.

Following this theme, today I created an Orange piece, #14 after the success of #13 which was Blue. For this one I used an old piece of artwork by my daughter E, which she had painted at my Mum's house sometime in the last year or so. E was happy for me to use it on the proviso that I kept some of her original background.

I spent some time cutting out bits and pieces from magazines and scraps of paper and began assembling the piece. It was quite a frustrating task at times, firstly because my trusted glue stick ran out and I had to switch to E's one from her school supplies. I found this to be incredibly sticky on my hands but not particularly adhesive on the card! Very irritating! Secondly, some of the bits I'd prepared looked more pink than orange once on the card so I had to be quite selective in which things I used, or more flexible in my approach. Lastly, I found some old fabric squares which I'd used previously to create other artworks; I really like the effect this creates. However, still not being able to access my art supplies in the garage, I currently have no pinking shears to use to cut the fabric and so it just frayed and didn't look neat enough. I used a few tiny bits anyway but I am hoping to be able to return to fabric art in the weeks and months ahead once I've found my pinking shears!

This Orange mixed media piece is quite minimal compared to others I have done. I like the the interpretation of the striped paper being clock hands, which would suggest a time of roughly 7pm. I also like the broken picture frame effect that is created around the majority of the collage pieces. E is happy with it which is the main thing, being as it was her artwork originally. I feel I've left a sufficient amount of her background so as not to suggest her painting was meaningless. The colour is perfect and I love that it is round. This is the second circular piece I've done (#2 was the first).