Idealized Notions of Beauty

I've just begun a new altered book. At this point, it has no theme other than the intention to do each page primarily in soulcollage style. Working from my now vast quantity of magazine images, I first chose the background, which I believe was from National Geographic, and then found myself adding statues of men. When I found the little guy in the corner trying to escape, I had a theme!

Tractor Collage

This was a birthday "card" for my brother-in-law. Recently when I saw him on his little tractor, it reminded me of the big tractors I loved in my childhood. So I constructed him one by using some of my large stash of magazine pages cut into appropriate tractor parts. I expecially liked the tire made from chainlink fence and a mudhole. The background is a photo/acrylic paint transfer. I mounted the tractor on top and coated the whole thing with several layers of gel medium. The border is cardstock with holes punched out.

Patterns Collage

I finally made a multi-colored collage. I was inspired by the large piece of paper in the bottom right. I produced it using the technique of citrasolve on a colored photo from the National Geographic. I love techniques that are totally unpredictable in what you end up with. I did a dozen or so pages; a few were stunning, some were interesting, and some were blah. The problem will be how to use them. This collage emerged when the colors reminded me of African prints.

Senses Collage

I thought that I was done doing this type of collage (color theme on soul collage format), but I guess I have more in me. I find the constraints that I've imposed somewhat freeing. I was writing in my journal the other day that when I have an idea (in words) and begin to add images to the words then I find that I'm way too literal. Starting instead with one aspect of image (color) and going from there brings me to composition and theme and eventually a message emerges. So I found this to be a great creative exercise.