House of Hope and Striving Collage

House of Hope and Striving,  Collage by Anita Barnard

Here is another recent collage with a different interepretation of a house. The piece explores the theme of Vincent Van Gogh's yellow house in Arles, France and the great hopes he had of creating an artists' community there. The collage is 8x10 on 11x14 Bristol board paper. It is comprised of found and created papers, text, images, ink and acrylic paint. Two examples of Vincent's handwriting from his correspondences appear in the piece, including the larger word "Tristement" in the roof. Sadness.

I worked on the piece on and off for over a week, then I just let it sit for another week, sometimes taking it out and looking at it, or arranging the last couple of elements on it. Finally I quit asking Edward and my youngest daughter whether I should add the last bits or not and just glued them down. I don't know why some pieces of art feel more certain, and others are dithered over for a long time, but I am happy with the decision I made. (Which is good, because you can always add something later, but it's a lot more problematic to rip something out.)

It was an interesting piece to work on, and sometimes a somewhat melancholy process, as I spent a lot of time thinking about Van Gogh's work and his life while working, as well as about the life and ideas of artists in general.

An archival print or a poster of House of Hope and Striving are available on Zazzle.

The images of wings came from The Graphics Fairy, a great site for vintage images.

Two New Collages - Houses and Birds

Collage with Mixed Media 8x8 inches

I've been having a lot of ideas for some little collages lately. Today I just finished up the images of two from last week. I keep thinking about house and home and all that means and that images of houses can symbolize and bring up emotionally for us. Like some of my other recent collages these two have the house image...and also some birds that crept in, which is not unusual in my collage work lately.

Collage  8x8 inches

 

The two pieces are very different in tone and color, one being more serene and pastoral, closer to a traditional landscape, and the other with more deep color and contrast, and as Edward said, more masculine "plus it has all those numbers." Now I'm not very into numbers, being more of a language and art person, but as a former quilter and sometime woodworker, these images of vintage tape measures and rulers just appealed to me.

Mixed Media Collage on Wood

Small Stories 10 by Anita Barnard

I'm posting some more of my Small Stories series of little collages.

Small Stories 11

These are about 51/4 x 5 1/4 inches x 3/4 inch thick so they can hang on the wall or sit on a shelf.

Small Stories 12

Small Stories 14  (Sorry, this picture is unedited.)

The old English garden urn image is from Karen.

Some of the Small Stories collage series

Linked here.

More Small Stories, Mixed Media Collage

First of all -

Happy Halloween!

"Orange Man" carved by Edward

I've just finished straightening up in GIMP some more of the Small Stories series of small collages on poplar wood panels. This batch starts the ones that I made most recently, from mid-September to mid-October. Sometimes it seems that tinkering around with the images to get the colors and everything right takes longer than making the pieces...today is one of those times.

Small Stories 10

Small Stories 11

Small Stories 12

Small Stories 13

Thanks once again to the Graphics Fairy for the vintage hand in the last collage.
This post i linked here.

Small Stories, Collage on Wood

 

Small Stories 5, Mixed Media Collage

Today I'm posting the rest of the Small Stories series of fun little mixed media collages on wood that I did in the spring. (I have a bunch more to get the imaging right on that I did over the last couple of months. I seem to work in spurts as far as different projects go...a few weeks or months of intense collage or glass fusing or mosaics or....)

Small Stories 6 Mixed Media Collage

These are 5 1/2 inch square on poplar board that I cut, sanded down and sealed with a couple of coats before I started painting and pasting.

Small Stories 7, Mixed Media Collage

Linked to collections here and here.

Whimsical Little Mixed Media Collage

 Fun, whimsical, quirky, charming...? Small Stories Series

 




Today I'm going back to the spring with some of the small mixed media collages on wood that I was making in April and May and only just got around to photographing. Two found a new home during the spring Arts Goggle, before I got a chance to take good pictures, but one is half visible here on the display wall over Edward's shoulder.

Small Stories 1, mixed media on wood

Small Stories 3, mixed media on wood

Small Stories 2, mixed media on wood

Thanks to Karen for images and inspiration.

Shakespeare and Me, My First Digital Collage!

Yesterday I created my first digital collage. It was fun, challenging and above all (at least at times) frustrating. And I am eager to discover that perfect image that will click with a new idea and get back at it today.

I am still very much in learning mode with my imaging program, and also in a love-hate relationship with it. I have used GIMP for quite a while now, and use it fairly frequently to do minor editing and mostly things like straightening up, cropping and adjusting file sizes on pictures of my art and jewelry. Making a collage takes a lot more skill, knowledge, and in my case, trial and error. Some of those functions just don't really explain what they do, and more importantly I usually had to hunt and guess to find the hidden button or function to do what I wanted. The undo function was well used. "Undo" good.

The theme of my collage was William Shakespeare and The Globe theater. I was immediately drawn to one particular image of Shakespeare, which rather resembles my own Edward. Besides Will and a 17th century rendition of the Globe, it includes what is believed to be Shakespeare's handwriting, a bit of an old map of Stratford on Avon and his signature.

The past couple of days I have also opened a shop on Zazzle and been experimenting with putting some of my images on products there, so when I completed the collage, I tried it out on a black T-shirt.

Archeologia and Collage

Roman Layers (maybe) 8x10

Here's another collage I created earlier this week. Roman Layers is just the working title...I had to  name the image file something...but it does convey a sense of my thoughts while I was creating the piece.

When I was in Rome with my friend Michelle a few years ago, we visited a church just a few blocks from the coliseum, the Basilica di San Clemente,

Fresco of San Clemente in the lower church

Mithraeum, designed to look like a cave

a 12th century basilica that is built on top of a 4th century church, still underneath, with many existing frescoes. Then we descended further to a 3rd century Mithraic temple.


It amazed and still amazes me how all these layers of history exist. How the present day church is at street level, and the many centuries of all that preceding life has moved down, down...


I was definitely thinking about that trip and those reflections about the layers of history when I was designing and making this collage.

As well as images and bits of painting, the piece also includes text in Italian from two sources and Latin text. Archeologia, Italian for archeology,  is a possible title for the collage, as well as the Latin,
Scientia Antiquitatis. Preferences and suggestions are welcomed.

This post, and lots of other stuff to look at,  is linked to this blog .


Update: "Roman Layers" is now up on my shop.