OK Paper Cutting

Just to share a little of the paper cuts I've been playing with the past year.

 (Rice paper on rag.)

 The light is much better in my new studio for taking pictures.  Looking at these I'm actually preferring the colored paper ones.  I've been very much inspired by folk-art and old textiles.

 (Kraft paper on rag)

I've always loved paper and collage.

 ("Gasps of flame in the green of night....the Pomegranates are in flower" - D.H. Lawrence)

I started with folding the paper in half to save time.  But it creates some weird effects - all I can see at the center of the above piece is a Samba-Queen kind of figure with headdress and folkloric breasts, breasts, breasts!  (You too?)  Not quite what I was aiming for.  I will probably collage over those body parts.

So I have to think ahead a bit more before proceeding with my cutting.  So far they have been free form explorations with never any grand design in mind.

 (all the rest of these are acid free drawing paper on rag grounds)

I have enjoyed the challenge of this work.  My worrying brain turns off and I really only have to worry about line and pattern.  It's like meditating.

 ("A tree there is that ..... staring fury - and the blind lush leaf may know not.... grief "- W.B. Yeats)

I'm not sure I have quite conquered the medium, or settled on final

 ("oh sweet spontaneous earth thou answerest them only with spring" - e.e. cummings)

"principles".   

But  I'm enjoying using scraps of poems embedded in them.  (And hoping noone comes after me for copyright infringement!)  Cuz we need poetry in our lives, don't we?

 ("I see long reefs of violets in beryl covered fens so dim, a gold-watered pactolus frets" - G.M. Hopkins.)

It's been a wonderful, strange trip! 

("Your thighs are apple trees whose blossoms touch the sky" - W.C. Williams)

And yes I do love 60's psychedelic art!  Can you tell?

This is the last real post I'm going to do before the holidays.  I've automated just a couple seasonal ones for the next two weeks.  Meanwhile I, and I'm guessing you, will be concentrating on making preparations for the holiday and spending as much time as possible with loved ones near and far.

I want to wish you a really lovely warm and safe holiday and a very HAPPY NEW YEAR.  Thanks so much for visiting here and sharing so much of yourselves both at Passage Paradis and as well "chez vous" wherever that might be in the real, or cyber world.  

You are all so wonderfully talented and lovely company!

See you in 2014!  xoxoxo