UGLY .....

 

I actually made this page in response to reports of yet more atrocities perpetuated by the Isis militants, wondering how anyone could seriously believe that God supports and applauds the rape, murder and torture of thousands of innocents.

And then today, this theme felt right for another reason - today the first woman Bishop will be consecrated, which should be a day for rejoicing.  However, in a week's time in our Diocese a man will also be consecrated Bishop who won't allow the Archbishop of York to lay hands upon him because those same hands will have consecrated Libby Lane.  This is the idea of "taint", as in somehow poisoned by laying hands upon a woman.  This man further asks that female incumbents of parishes do not celebrate communion while he is in their church.  Words fail me, or at least they haven't and I have written to my Bishop protesting this appointment in the strongest terms.  You can probably appreciate my point about ugliness, and I cannot understand while these two contradictory appointments seem right to the church's hierarchy?

Anyway, that's enough church politics.  This page began as a painted background, with a collaged pair of shoes and some washi tapes.  The shoes kind of represent the spiritual journey, and the birds on a wire the general "twittering" of many voices.

The rest is more or less purely decorative, put there for no particular reason except that I liked it and it looked right, although the colours might be said to reflect my feelings of anger?  I added more pieces of collage - just shapes and patterns that I happened to like, and which I added to with my paint pens.

The starburst shapes are a stamp, and of course no page of mine would be complete without a gazillion dots as shading ....

Forgive me if I'm using my art blog to rant about my particular concerns (and perhaps prejudices), I don't normally do so but on this occasion it was too much on my mind not to 

INVISIBLE?

  

Well after that little bit of  (unpleasant) excitement, lets get back to the art!  I may have mentioned that I'm now working occasionally in a junk journal - literally made from junk in the form of any old flyers, leaflets etc that I could lay my hands on, plus a variety of paper offcuts I've been saving for years "in case they come in handy)!

This is one of the pages - I was feeling my age (60) and as an older woman pretty much invisible and of no value, so this was me standing on a mountain top shouting "hey, I'm here, I've got lots to offer if you'll only listen".  It was a bit the same when I was "just somebody's mummy" and not a person in my own right.  Nothing more certain to get my feminist hackles rising ... and I tend to growl a bit too.

You can see below that the basic page was a bit of a patchwork with left over bits of paper joined together with washi tape and cut outs from a copy of an old journal page - its fun to do that, recycle your own work.  I've got a print/scan/copy printer which makes it easy to do, but its well worth getting copies of your favourite pages.  At one stage I'd also collected a lot of vintage collage images, which I don't use much any more, so one of them found its way onto the  page as well.  Its all junk, right?

And then I'm afraid it turned into a bit of a rant, or possibly even a mega-whinge, according to how you look at it.  At least it gets it off your chest and down on the page, which definitely helps.

And this was the finished result - sorry the pictures are a little bit dark, but as you may know, its been that way in the UK for the past few days!  Am thinking of building an ark, but then again January is always like that.

This is the page in context showing a bit more of the junk journal, and the picture below shows the spreads overleaf - still works in progress.

You can see that the pages in the journal are all different sizes, depending on the paper available, and I've incorporated fold-outs in places as well.  Overall its an attempt to stretch myself and try different things without feeling that I'm "ruining" my main journal.  I'm enjoying it, and the freedom to make ugly art without judgement!!

I hope you are able to see this and be warned that malware has hijacked my blog address and now redirects to an advertising site.  If anyone knows how to get it back I'd be SO grateful for their help - after years building up this blog I'd be devastated if I have to start over.

PROBLEM SOLVED thanks to my altogether amazing and wonderful niece.  Blessings be upon her bonny head for getting me out of this one, which took some tracking down but she did it eventually!  

GOD SEES ME ....

Those of you who've been with me a long time will know that I sometimes make pages about my inner spiritual life, but these are the ones I don't post very often because they're deeply personal and may not make sense to everyone.  However, I hope this one is an exception and I'm sharing it because I really LIKE it ... and I don't necessarily like everything I make!

I'd begun a page I didn't like at all so had gessoed/painted over it - I didn't mind at all that you could still see some parts through, because that just makes it more interesting.

I'd recently bought this new eye stamp and knew I wanted to use it - unfortunately it didn't stamp very well on this surface but I just drew over parts of it.  What I was originally intending here was the eye would represent God, and the small person underneath would be me ... but that's not how it turned out!

In the end it became all about God, visually at least, but the thought expressed below made me feel calm and peaceful at a time when there's a lot going on in my life!

And perhaps one of the reasons I'm so pleased with the result could be the bold simple shapes, when too often I go in for too much fiddly detail?  Well it seems to work here anyway. The pointy finger is from a collage sheet, as are the letters GOD, and the other shapes are cut from patterns and colours that appealed to me - from magazines and books - and then drawn on top to make them my own. Detail mostly added with my trusty Posca paint pens, the shading on the face uses my Promarkers.

Happy New Year to all my readers!  I don't make resolutions but I do have hopes and dreams for the year ahead which may well come to fruition in 2015.  My take on it is always that if its meant to be then it will be, and if not I was barking up the wrong tree (again)!  I let God sort it out.