Abstract collages made from paintings

June 9, 2018 10:24 AM

I’m looking for ideas for abstract collages to be made from my own abstract paintings. I usually use cut up pieces (or hole-punched pieces) of alcohol ink on Yupo, but I also work in watercolor and some acrylic. I’ve mostly been pretty straightforward (ink, cut assemble, ta-da!) and am looking for more ambitious design ideas. Here is an example of one I've done before--I'd like to get a little less straightforward than this one.

I really love Josie Lewis but don't know how she composes from the ground up.


I want to do more elaborate collages and am also hoping to work bigger. I want the collages to still be abstract.
I welcome any project ideas, book recs, artists to check out, etc.

posted by mermaidcafe to Media & Arts (2 answers total)

Best answer: Josie Lewis's stuff is nice, but awfully detailed/fiddly, and presumably she is probably doing some planning/mapping it out prior to execution. I think I actually like your example a bit better than her stuff.

Have you considered not doing all pieces with straight edges, but rather doing some tearing of the paper rather than just cutting, and then collaging that, and also maybe trying to pull a piece together by doing a bit of a wash or something on certain parts after you have collaged your parts together? You could also maybe try adding texture or pattern by folding or crumpling or creasing the paper before you cut it up? Here's a tool. (I'm just offering things to experiment with.)
posted by gudrun at 1:46 PM on June 9, 2018 [1 favorite]

With your stuff I think cutting out shapes would be cool, and then layering more paint, tape, or other collage pieces on top of things - vary the shapes, sizes, and textures. You can also stitch on top of collage or incorporate other materials. You don't have to include figurative stuff, but a wider variety of shapes could be good.

I do a lot of collage art and have generally found that one of the things that helps me is... instagram. There are a lot of great artists doing interesting, weird things that they post. Here are some that I like:

themedialuna - traditional collage
annabelle.podgornii - collage
dianeescottart - this artist in particular does a lot of layered collage with her paintings. She's been into embroidery recently, so just scroll back a bit.
__jenesaispas___ or possibly _jenesaispas__ - not sure how many underscores - traditional collage but very inventive
serg_nehaev
petrifiedrainbow - this is Josie Lewis' insta for rainbow resin pieces, she also has a regular insta.

Basically there's tons of cool stuff and it can be a bit of a rabbit hole, but it's also relatively easy to put it down if you need to do that.
posted by bile and syntax at 9:18 AM on June 10, 2018 [1 favorite]