This is among my favorite sets of daily collage pages in my “Looking for a Fairy Tale” art journal.
The scan is as good as it’s going to get, for now. (I’ll see if I can get better photos when the new camera hardware arrives.)
My (current*) husband suggested that – perhaps – the pages should look buckled and shadowed. It’s part of the authenticity of the work.
Then again, he’s an artist. For him, the initial impression is as important as the technical details. I love how well he understands the process-v-product aspects of our respective art projects.
The actual pages are heavily collaged and glittered. I created them in a moment (one of many) of frustration and anger. I was at least as angry myself as at my (in 2002) soon-to-be-ex.
These pages were about speaking up. Being myself. Not explaining who I was, what I was doing, or why. Just being. And just to be.
Whether anyone else saw me – or what I did – as “brilliant” wasn’t as important as creating.
Doing the things that I do well. Things unique to me.
So there it is. Raw and a little frantic, and an emotional explosion in progress.
But also the recognition that I’m an artist. A creator. And maybe nobody else will “get” my art. But maybe a few will.
Scanning this journal is a deeply emotional process for me. Looking at these pages, it’s impossible not to see what was going on at the time I created them. And how I got there, a little at a time.
I’m glad that’s behind me.
I’m also glad I documented it in raw and passionate art.
I need to do more of this.
These are two pages in a 5″ x 8.5″ spiral-bound art notebook. Materials: Torn pages from magazines, colored tissue paper, glitter, and Golden Gel Medium.
* It seems utterly absurd to have to differentiate my husbands. Much of my life has been about raising my family, baking chocolate chip cookies, and going for lovely, long walks on the beach on foggy days. I have no way to explain – even to myself – the many extraordinary things I’ve done (and continue to do), in a life that I otherwise think of as quite tame and average.
But, yes, some things in my life were (and still are) unexpected. Now…? I wouldn’t have it any other way.