Over the past couple of days at college we where finishing the last sections in our Urban environment module as our first assessment was due on Friday at 12am sharp. I spent most of Monday and Friday evening paranoidly going over most of my modules making sure everything was up to scratch for this that I was up till the early hours as I didn’t want to be adding the finishing touches on the Friday morning during class.
At class while others where doing last minute touches I spent my time going over the interior and fashion design magazines again that we had been using to adapt the repetitve paterns we had designed over the project.
An image of what is to be believed is the virgin Mary cradling Christ after the crucifixion really stood out to me and and felt the urge to use it in some way. I began to use a vary of image elements I had hoarded of the course of our modules to incorporate into a collage and added a stitching method also, I apologise as I was so engrossed by myself working I completely forgot to record the progress of my piece as it grew to finished piece.
I chose to use elements from articles that I initially wanted to interweave into the cloak to portray the idea this is a story, hidden underneath this moment purposefully choosing to leave the ‘‘spilling down’’ text to add to the dynamic that Mary is dropping Christ.
Initially I wanted to remove the face to leave empty as a sort of negative space but chose to use the image of musical notation as I feel it would pair well with an idea of stitch to incorporate that she remains silent in this moment of deep sorrow yet there lies brief song of beauty with a very mediavalistic angel aiding in playing this song.
Deep in the chest I added a faint black and white image to again show the internal struggle that is being held in at the moment in time that she exemplifies. I then chose to frame the section of Mary longing over the death of her son as it felt like it aids in the composition of the piece drawing the mood to the action and impact it has.
I tried to replicate how the transfiguration and halos where done in old Christian art pieces with the scrap materials I had at hand over various projects. After completion I ran my finished collage through the photocopier experimenting with different overlays and and removing certain colours.
I really enjoyed working on this and with the juices flowing ill definitely be on the look out for more scrap images people overlook, must add that my eyes are opening up to more artists now than before which is helping in a diversification of media exploration.
Id love to hear your thoughts on this work so please leave a comment or feel free to drop me an email if you have any ideas of great things for resources or even just criticism on my writing as its something i’m looking forward to improving on.
Mike out….
