Dimensions of a Doorway

Seven months passed between my first trio of collages and when I made my next collage. In that time, I passed through many doorways, both literal and metaphorical. It was inevitable, as so much change was taking place in my life: I moved from Chicago back to my hometown of Buffalo; I lived with relatives for three months, then I moved in with a friend while looking for a house to purchase; I was reconnecting with old friends; I was making new friends; I was discovering my own life again after getting out of a seven-year relationship. Everything was new. Everything was different. I was a buoy at sea, staying afloat through the tidal waves of change.

Like the Sun Triumphant trilogy, my next collage was created as a greeting card for another friend’s birthday. She is a longtime friend and one of the few people, along with her husband, who allowed me space throughout my adolescence to be the person I was becoming without any judgement. I visited her two months prior to making this collage for her and was reminded how much of a true friend she is. She is a fellow artist, so the stakes were high for me to create something worthwhile. In the back of my mind, I wondered if my success at creating art that painful day back in Chicago was a singular exception or if I really could replicate that success and create something rewarding again. To add to the looming doubts, I was living a "Spartan lifestyle" due to circumstances at that time, existing with only the essentials and living out of boxes for the most part. As such, I was limited in the supplies and tools at my disposal. Refusing to let any of that intimidate me, I scattered everything I had on the bedroom floor around me and went to work. I kept the composition simple and listened to my intuition, which resulted in:

Doorway

“Doorway” was created on the 30th of April 2009, and is comprised of card stock, ink, magazine clippings, and the photograph "Orange as Any Orange on a Tree" by Nuesa Quaresma. The subject and title speaks to the motif of my life then: stepping through doorways. Additionally, I was in the process of closing on my house, and thus pondering the mystifying doorway into the unknown realm of home ownership that awaited. During my recent visit with my friend, she introduced me to the song “Tangerine” by Led Zeppelin. That song, along with her adoration for the color orange, heavily influenced my choices while creating this collage. Like the majority of my artwork, I created this piece by starting with the background and then working my way forward. Wanting to achieve absolute color cohesion, I altered the card stock from its original off-white with rubber stamp ink to saturate it with the vibrant orange. Once I found the image of the doorway, the other elements coalesced into the collage above.

Looking at this piece now, it’s easy for me to see its flaws, or at least see things that I would change or refine if I were to create it again. However, I've learned that, in the same vein as writing, we have to look back at our previous work with context. While we're viewing our previous work through the eyes of the skill we have today, we have to remember that we didn't have this level of skill when we created the work because our skill is cumulative. Accordingly, our previous work-- whether it's music, writing, or artwork-- is a doorway to the past, documenting the artistic journey of honing our skill. Despite any limitations or doubts, “Doorway” is one of my collages that garners the most comments from people. It’s a prime example of regardless how we feel about our own work (we are often our own worst critic), it may speak to other people in ways we could never anticipate. This amplifies the importance, as an artist, to have faith in our talent and trust our intuition enough to step through that doorway into the unknown and create from the heart.    

Featured in this post: Doorway 
View Nuesa Quaresma's Orange as Any Orange on a Tree
All current artwork can be found in my profile at Fine Art America. Thank you for your time and your support.