Two quiet, yet lively, paintings with a history

Pleasure of the Dance (12" square, gesso, collaged hand-printed tissue paper, acrylic on cradled wood panel.)

Keeping Time (12" square, gesso, collaged hand-printed tissue paper, acrylic on cradled wood panel.)

Pleasure of the Dance and Keeping Time are two more mixed-media paintings that started as something else and were completely re-worked. I'm so glad I went back to what was there and started again! Allowing myself to "ruin" pieces often frees me to create things I really like so much more. This has become a pattern for me, and an important part of my practice.

These paintings began as collages using gel-printed tissue papers left over from when I made my daughter's chuppah (wedding canopy). These were the brighter pieces that didn't fit into the subtler color scheme of the wedding. The chuppah was really beautiful! But the afterthought collages? They just weren't working for me after a while.

So I took a deep breath, drizzled on some white paint, and then painted over it all with gesso. I freely dragged an implement through the wet gesso, which formed the "grasses." (Are these grasses in snow? Are they in the sea?) While the marks may look painted on, what you're actually seeing is the collage paper from underneath. I did add some glazing to both the background and the vertical strokes, but primarily what you're seeing is the color in the tissue paper below the gesso. 

Here's a detail of one of the original collages, so you can see what the strokes are actually made of. I hope you get the chance now and then to make something new out of the old and enjoy the transformation!