My newfound love! Mixed media/collage!

I love learning new things, in my art practice and in life in general.

Recently I signed up for an online class in mixed media collage painting with an amazing tutor from Chatsworth, Ontario, Canada.  Heather Murray Art is an accomplished artist who uses copies of old photographs, decorative papers, printed papers, textured and patterned papers or anything she can get her hands on so she can combine these with acrylic painting.

The class I took was 'Memory Portraits' and I did so with two photographs of my parents firmly embedded in my mind.  The two pictures of my parents and the settings in which they were photographed, always made me think of renowned paintings I had seen in London and New York.

Seeing a photograph of my youthful mum reclining on the banks of the Thames always reminded me of American artist, Andrew Wyeth's painting "Christina's World" (not that the story of Christina was in any way my mum's story).  So this is Doreen reclining in Wyeth's golden field with the Wheatsheaf pub on the horizon, where she and my dad spent many courting days.

I was then keen to use the photograph of my handsome dad on his Matchless motorbike.  When this photo was taken of my dad I was three years old and at the same time I found dad's photo, I found this photo of me dressed as the UK children's character Andy Pandy and I wanted to put the photos together.

I had Banksy's image "Girl with balloon" in mind for this painting because it has connotations of love, hope, innocence and childhood. My dad was my hero, and I lost him far too early to cancer.  I connected with the words that Banksy wrote on the wall  "There is always hope" because they  reflected the way he was; always positive, always joking, always looking forward to new adventures and always full of hope for the future.

I think there will be more of these memory portraits for me, it's not only rewarding but thoroughly heart-warming and tenderly nostalgic.

 

 

1 comment

  • Thank you for sharing this story Jayne! I am humbled by your mention in this post . I absolutely love how you interpreted this workshop and fashioned your own personal portraits of your parents ;-) Heather

    heather Murray

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