Art is Life is Art: Susan Reep Photo Art

Creative Every Day January theme: Body.  Let’s Get Physical popped right into my head.  Remember Olivia Newton John’s song? Let me hear your body talk, body talk.

Bodies talk in so many ways besides getting physical.  Leah’s post about shadows reminded me instantly of a photo I took a couple of weeks ago on the Kern River.

So I started wondering how I could make this shadow “talk.”  We also been snowboarding during this same visit so I thought I’d transform this photo into something I’m calling Shadow Boarding.  Putting the shadow to work.

Here’s another work-in-progress that I just finished.  When we cleaned out our bookcase not long ago, we decided to put a book of Japanese prints in the discard stack.  The book was old, the pages brittle, and we can purchase much better now if we want.  But then – wait! I can use these in collages.  And I have.  Here’s the first one.

This began as the backdrop for a still life on which I’d painted pears.

I forgot that I was going to dedicate this canvas to still life backgrounds and repaint as needed.  So I painted over it in shades of purple.  Then I started cutting and pasting images from the Japanese print book.  It needed contrast, so I took the old-fashioned pitcher from another still life (I actually cut it out of the print) – you can see that still life here.

It still needed some contrast so I took the old brown paper that said This Side Up and put it along the left side.  This is what I got:

What an incredible mess!  I let it sit for a month or so and then had the aha! moment.  Change the background.  So I painted the background as you saw it above.  What a difference.  Just in case you forgot

I finished it off by outlining the figures either in black or white paint sharpies.  The mashup worked.  It’s a mashup of bodies but it works.  What it says, you decide.

And as long as we’re talking about mashups, I did a journal entry yesterday that I piled everything into.  Background: I’ve been photographing seriously since 1992, but I didn’t start doing anything but photography until June 2008.  So everything you see in my art gallery has been done since then.  But I have no training.  I don’t know anything about nothing.  Or nothing about anything.  BUT I have been reading your blogs through Creative Every Day and trying things out.  Lots of my posts from Creative Every Day Month were journal pages – last November was when I started an art journal.

Ok, it’s been said before, by me and by others – I’m a creature of excess.  Nothing in moderation.  So in yesterday’s journal page I used many – too many – of the techniques I’d been reading about.

Namely, trying gel transfers, pastels, torn paper from art papers, watercolor washes for background, acrylics to highlight, doodling and putting on words, etc. etc.   My journal page is 6.5×10 inches.  Small.  But I went nuts and persevered and found out that with enough stuff I could make it work.  I hope I’m right in assuming journal means it doesn’t have to be perfect.

How does it tie  into Body? I thought of Emily Dickensen’s poem and famous line – Hope is the thing with feathers.  And it is – that’s what powers our bodies – hope, ever ready to fly again, refresh, renew, and move forward.  Hope powers the body and the soul.

Tags: art journal, CED2010, collage, Creative Every Day, hope, Japanese prints, mashup

This entry was posted on Monday, January 11th, 2010 at 4:56 PM and is filed under Art, Photography. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.