In Progress: The Songs of Captives

Above, see a picture of the work in progress, The Songs of Captives.

The panel on the left has the map pieces fixed on, while the center and middle are just laid on as I wait to glue them down. I am wondering on cutting some of the circles in fractions to imply the pattern across the canvases or not, and I haven't made up my mind yet.

What you see here are map cutouts in two different sizes as the collage elements. I anticipate a third layer of imagery on top of that (the "three" motif is important to me in all my works somehow) that I have had planned from the start.

As you can see, I mentioned earlier that I would be exploring some different collage elements here, and I meant this use of circular patterns.

Using circles has been a goal of mine for a long time. I did it on a earlier large painting called "Kiss" that was included in a few of my shows in Montana. I read in a write up on Jackson Pollock once that when you begin to work in circles, you are really losing your mind.

While I don't really aspire to lose my mind, I do like the challenge of it (using circles, that is). Also, I have been thinking a lot of Lichtenstein's dots. While he used them to make up a larger picture, I began to wonder what it would be like if the dots were the picture. This piece is my first attempt at that, although I do have plans to incorporate imagery using these circle patters in different ways already living in my sketchbook.

In fact, that gives me an idea- it is probably good to post some pages from my sketchbook over the past few months. I will do that soon. Might be interesting for some of the blog readers.

I hope to have this piece, and a few other new ones, done for Open Studios. Although, the next level of collage is a new approach for me as well, and might take some trial and error to get right.