i am big believer in happy accidents when it comes to daily art practices such as this collage-a-day challenge. for example, in this series i had painted up an old kitchen towel with acrylic paints intending to cut shapes of  bottles, bowls, and cups to make a series of  tabletop still life collages. in the end, the bleed through on the back side of the kitchen cloth was far more interesting than my more deliberate effort on the front side. 

paper, acrylic paint, and kitchen linen on 300 gsm watercolor paper

this series was a collaboration between myself (the page painter) and my eighteen year old daughter Eva (the cut-out gluer). we sat opposite each other at the kitchen table, for an entire afternoon. i painted while she cut and glued. we ended the day happy to be together, filled to the gills with too much tea, pleased with our results, and talking smack about future collaborations.

this series is inspired by the work of american collage artist raymond saá.

i gave a sneak peak of this new series of collages on instagram a little while ago. and, wow, people loved it. it is so easy to do: paint some pages in a gradient of saturation, cut them into little strips or squares, and glue them in shingled rows to a stiff watercolor paper. if that sounds too irksome, i will have these for sale eventually.

dawn of a new era: introducing STILL “dawn”

for calendar year 2017, i have accepted a personal challenge of making one collage a day. to keep myself honest, but also keep the project fun, i have formalized my collage-a-day challenge with a set of rules specific enough to help me focus, but loose enough to allow me to play. here are the rules I have put in place: make 1 collage per day for 1 year, pick 1 style each week and make 7 variations, share the best 6 each week on social media, revisit earlier styles only if there is a new twist.

i hope you check back here regularly. i will be adding six new collages a week for the rest of 2017.

affectionately,
mary jo