ATA: Into The Woods

TURNING POINT 

The introduction of collage into my work has been the biggest turning point for me in this project, I have been stuck for weeks playing around with different mediums. I ended up reading three of Haruki Murakami's novels in the end before I really had a clear idea of how to visually present the work. 

INTO THE WOODS 

His work really made me feel a sense of isolation and disconnection from reality so that was something I wanted to bring into the work I was making. I was messing around with scraps left over from my mono print sessions and arranged something interesting on my page. I continued to make other work but kept looking at the piece I had made earlier and realised that the reason I kept coming back to it was because there was something visually interesting there and I should develop it further. This first piece is modelled on a scene in Norwegian Wood and so named "into the woods". 

I really dislike collage but as I played around with the composition I really enjoyed the sense of distortion it gave the work. I finished the collage but the problem with the original was that there wasn't just two colours in the print, but I loved the textures. This was something I brought up in a meeting with Ben who advised that I go to the mono print studio and produce lots of textures and colours and also that I take the existing piece into photoshop and convert it into two of the strongest colours so that it met the brief. 

I did this and then realised that I would have to make a decision whether to go landscape or portrait, after some consideration I chose landscape so it gave me more space to add textures in. 

After scanning it in to photoshop I realised that I would have to edit the original ( as it was made portrait) and this was the biggest problem I had with this piece. I duplicated the trees from the left hand side and took them to the right. It still wasn't sitting right on the page so then I embedded some tree like mono prints I had done in the workshop. I was pleased with it but it still felt like it was missing something. 

I left this piece along for a while so I could think on it as I created the others. I spoke again to Ben who encouraged me to keep the cats that had come from the mono print in my work. I began to collage the cats in the background of other pieces. The cats are representative of the women in Murakami's novels who were so mysterious but always present. 

LATER ON 

I came back to the piece after creating the others and decided to embed my favourite piece from screen print in the background and it worked far better than I had hoped. I could have easily left it out but I liked the screen print so much I felt it should be a part of the collage. 

I still think it works well within the piece and gives it that added extra mystery (as its not immediately noticeable) and I think out of them all this is my favourite piece (from the colour choice to the secret cat).