Collages... |
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I had the idea for very stylized simplified representations of Rome's monuments many years ago then everything lay dormant.
Then about 10 years ago I produced 2 abstract collage designs for front covers of an expat magazine in Rome (right middle bottom), 2 ideas for greetings cards (right middle top), and more recently 3 further abstract designs based only on colour: gold, platinum and pink, which I've named Glamour, Rosemary and Mademoiselle (top right). I had accumulated quite a pile of fashion magazines over the years, but decided to streamline, wanting to reduce the amount of 'stuff' in our apartment. I also wanted to incorporate recycling into my projects, so I decided to use the magazines as a resource and began selectively ripping them up. Then when we were hit by the stress and trauma of Covid-19 and two months quarantine I produced 24 images - 12 of Venice and 12 of Rome - to be used in calendars but also to apply the designs to other surfaces such as fabrics and accessories. The designs are vivid and jewel-like, reminiscent of Dolly Mixtures (multi-coloured sweets from my childhood). During lockdown the ripping up and gluing down of the pieces was highly therapeutic - I had a loose idea of colour palettes but went largely on instinct choosing pieces based on colour, shape and texture with minimal repositioning in the final images. My aim hasn't been to create a realistic interpretations of the monuments, in fact some are quite abstract and 2-dimentional, but occasionally I have aimed to give depth, such as with Castel Sant'Angelo, St. Peter's Basilica & Square, the Spanish Steps, Rome and the La Fenice theatre, Venice. So if you're familiar with these Italian cities you will probably recognise them easily but they can also be enjoyed as purely abstract images without having to understand what they are. Once happy with the images they are scanned into Photoshop and 'tidied up' ready for printing. This is the laborious part of the process...zooming in so that I can adjust the image right down to each pixel. |
    RomeVenice |
