Fund-raising success!
This 50cm collage donated to the RNLI: ’A bit bouncy’, raised around £400 for Southwold lifeboat crew, on a horribly wet day! Very pleased with that.
I’ve also been working on an 80cm collage on board. Working on most pieces takes the form of a lengthy, stop-start process, with long gaps while I work out what I want to change. In a collage change is not too difficult. It can be achieved either by adding more translucent and opaque layers, or wetting the surface and doing a bit of ‘wallpaper scraping’ and peeling off which actually can be exciting since unplanned alterations to the form happen. The subject for this collage is my beloved Southwold Harbour, with its cluttered scattering of black huts.
A fire had destroyed one of the fish and chip cafes, and damaged another.
After a while, in terms of the composition, I had already felt the need to remove some blue sky areas, and reduce what had been an extensive patterned grey area bottom right. I was also feeling uncomfortable with what looked like a floating hut top right.
So here above you can see I applied yellow tissue sheets (painted with acrylic ink), to see if these might link or unify the composition.
Not quite satisfied, I then considered how else I could link the two sides of the composition and came up with this: showing a detail of the device I used – a painted-on suggestion of a fence and a few objects that might be boating kit.
While a work is in development, it’s always wise to have several pieces on the go so that it’s possible to walk away to focus on something else, then return when a way forward suggests itself.
Some weeks later, after some ‘wallpaper stripping’ here’s the finished result. Very pleased with it since the effect of removing/tearing off areas seemed to reveal the damage and distress the fire had cause to the businesses involved.
“After the fire”
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