I spent Saturday morning with my local art / surface design group in New Smyrna Beach. We meet monthly and have been spending our days together with each working on our own project.

I was drawing – using a grid and rendering a scene of three figures – working very hard to get the proportions and angles right. It was HARD!

But as I was drawing I was thinking of abstract work, and a great studio visit I had with several fellow artists this week. While they visited we looked at a number of my paper collaged works. We shared that we both love abstract work but find that creating it is hard. For me, abstract composition is HARDER that representational.

Creating collaged works has taught me a lot. One of my key takeaways is that It helps me to establish a horizon line.

To know where to begin. To know where I am.

I began this abstract landscape with a sense of sky above and ground below. OK. I’m grounded now. I can begin to arrange the parts with some looseness and not-completely-representational sensibility because I have a sense of space.

This composition has a very strong horizon line. That gave me a way to think about what forms would go where. Underground is more mysterious. Above ground is knowable, more realistic.

Here are a couple in which the horizon is less defined. But it’s there, guiding the composition.

When my studio friends departed I spent some time looking at this collage.

I have created several pieces with a similar pattern. An underlying grid. Then collaged pieces or painted forms going across the underlying structure. Then something large with a reversal to let the underneath colors show through.

Of every four of these I try, I end up throwing away two.  But, when it works out, the process is very pleasing to me. I confess that I like this composition a lot. I built it out of layers of monotype-printed tissue paper. I let the colors and patterns evolve.

I enjoy the work of artists who go about building the picture plane in ways quite different from me: organic splashes of energetic color. For me, at last so far, I can wade into new or interesting patterns and layers best when I have a horizon to hold on to.

If you would like to learn more about the works in this blog post, they are all on my website (and, whaddaya know, available for purchase) here: WEDNESDAY COLLAGE GALLERY.

For all the artmakers: Happy creating
For all the art lovers: Happy appreciating

Thank you for reading. I always enjoy questions and comments.
--Bobbi
bobbi@bobbibaughstudio.com

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