Thursday, April 28, 2011

Dreams, the soul & Jung collage

I'm a huge fan of Carl Jung and his writings so finally got around do creating a collage regarding his concepts of dreams, the subconscious and the soul.  I chose a Julia Margaret Cameron photo of Esther, circa late 1800's as the dreamer, imposed along with a photo of Carl Jung over his natal chart since I once was a professional astrologer and enjoy looking at charts of authors and scientists.  The fish in the collage represent the dream, since water, the undersea and even the black swan are all symbols of night according to the Italian philosopher, Ficinio.  Plus I'm a Pisces so fish are cool with me.  I used a number of techniques, including the taping off of lines the use of gesso and gel mediums, and composition I learned from both Claudine Helmuth's Collage Discovery Workshop and Bee Shay's Collage Lab, whose books are great on collage.
This is a small piece, 8X10 so I kept it simple. The main images besides the natal chart and vintage photos are all Graphic 45 papers form the Steampunk Debutant Collection.  I accented with stamped words which read, "The Soul Must Be awakened, using a stamp letter collection and also added the Nick Bantock saying"To Be Read Between the Lines."  Nick and Dave McKean were the firs artist to inspire me to work with collage.
And I was very excited to try a new technique I learned form a Tim Holtz video using his fragments to make the tiles.  I love this technique and it's so easy and my adult son thought they were the coolest part of the artwork.  So I'm planning on using them a lot more. -

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