small work, abstracts and collage

These small collage and mixed media pieces were done in response to a challenge to look at city streets - but not in a traditional way - to find something else there, abstract it and experiment.

I became fascinated (I know I'm a sad person!) with the potholes and cracks and marks on the pavements, with summer dust and dried pine needles accumulating and did some sketches.

I'd got some hand made paper that I'd made on a one-day papermaking class. It was interesting paper for collage but some was a bit too thick to do much else with. The paper had interesting additions - I'd put pine needles, petals, threads, all sorts into it. It was perfect for the subject.

They are made of layers of my hand made paper, acrylic paints, powdered earth pigments and whatever made the right kind of mark :)

They are only tiny - 5inches square-ish. One day I may do some larger canvasses based on them - but at the moment I'm juggling enough projects!

I really enjoyed working with a limited colour scheme, thinking of the urban environment and the original source and then using the velvety texture of the powdered pigment dropped onto pva glue, the rough papers layers and collaged and the painting and drawing elements and trying to pull it all together into an urban piece.




Sometimes it's nice to work small :)