i have been working on a collage series this month. i have fallen in love with this series of splayed creatures. what is beneath the skin......

it is a slow build as i assemble my outdoor studio on the porch. boxes of images that i've cut and collected for years. piles of books that may have what i'm looking for. scissors. glue. brushes and boards. carrying armload after armload down the stairs and through the back door to the porch. and when it's piled across the table, there is alot of staring. and shuffling through images on onion skin pages and rough yellowed paper. and dealing with the glaring shiny paper that sometimes holds beautiful imagery. and running back upstairs to sift through piles that are buried in the paper room. making piles of 'maybes'. and whittling them down to the few that might just be right. it takes hours before i can pour the glue. and i slide the pieces around like a puzzle of the vision that sprouts behind my eyes. singing with nick cave and sarah harmer and david bowie.
the sun is spotted and leafy and dappled on my work area. the natural filter is perfect. yet the sun is warm on my shoulders and forearms and it naturally dries the glue with speed. the work takes over. i have to be forced away from it. this is what makes me miserable and ecstatic. this work is what i am.

for years i painted. i thought it was what i would always do. i was driven to paint. but gradually my painting was replaced.
a few years ago i worked in an art supply store. i had been sure that this was the ideal part time job for me. a truly perfect place for me to while away time, fantasizing about the brilliant potential of the materials at my disposal, organized on shelves for me to choose from. going home with bags of paint and wonderful papers and canvases. but i found the days endlessly long. there was a lifeless and wretched quality to those days. i couldn't understand it. how was it possible that i could be bored. period. i am never bored. ever. and here i was wandering between the shelves going mad with boredom. and i started to analyze it. the art materials were quite pathetic, actually. stiff and empty and meaningless, waiting sadly. static. dead. there was no vitality. they were quite ridiculously depressing until they were used. until they become the art they are dead materials.
and i think the contrast is a sharp one when compared to the bookstore where i also work. being in the presence of books all day is powerful. the ideas and knowledge and power of story leap among the shelves with an energy and speed and sparkle that is impossible to muffle. there is no waiting. the work is complete and present and real and true.
i make art from books. the pages steeped in age and thought and image and brilliant skipping energy motivate me and find me and engage me while i find my own new language in them. for 20 years or more i had used old printed pages in my work, attaching them to paintings, incorporating them with ease. but without knowing when or why, the pages took over entirely. i may have grown disenchanted spending too much time with the dead, soul-less materials, but i believe i was heading on this journey regardless.

in my paper room, cutting and gluing and organizing beautiful old images is what i think i do best. don't get me wrong....i love building quilts .... feeling the cottons and being saturated in the dazzling colors and patterns. and i can spend days, weeks even, putting them together and feeling confident and proud of what i'm making, sewing and cutting and piling the patterned fabrics together. but i think when i'm with the paper the best comes out of me. the images that weave themselves onto the panels are such fine and delicate creatures that i wonder at their details like the wonder of a newborn's translucent fingernails. they come to the surface as if they have risen from the depths of an underwater cave. mysterious, gradually coming into focus. and they seem to breathe. stare at me and convince me they are not simply a flat image.

this paper work is what my paintings have progressed to. and i hope that i don't allow these creatures to be choked and flattened and buried as my painting has been. i need these paper sylphs. i think they are my destiny.