My little girl has a board book of Matisse collages. It gets me thinking every time I read it to her -what is it like to draw or paint with scissors? Can I do that?

I recently ran across this article by my friend Lauren Kindle on her blog Generous Permission. It talks about a workshop taught by artist Rotem Amizur at King’s Oaks on making collages with painted paper.

I thought - maybe I could do that! I remember making collages in grade school with painted papers and I loved it. I have also seen some wonderful collages by Ken Kewley who is a real inspiration to me. I think I’ve mentioned his notes on color in at least every other blog post. (It’s really great! Read it when you have time!)

Anyways, this collage is a copy of one of the paintings I made in Italy during the summer of 2017.

When I was making it I was amazed at how much collage can be like painting with Hawthorne’s color spot theory. In Kindle’s blog, Rotem says to pick out three sets of light and dark pairs. I selected large important light or dark shapes in the composition and used the scissors to “draw” the silhouettes. In “Hawthorne on Painting” Hawthorne talks about painting color spots starting from the middle of the spot. He says to work out towards the edges of each spot from the middle.

In collage that makes some sense too. I’ve found so far that it’s good to cut each shape thinking of it as a whole and not as an outline - to think in spots and not lines.

The result is pretty graphic. I hope to make a collage from life next. Au revoir for now!