and they say romance is dead

resting her weary head

I am a doll person, in the sense that I used to play with dolls and Barbies a lot. I felt a huge responsibility towards them and whenever I left them alone in my bedroom it seemed I was abandoning them. So, before I went to school or anywhere else I made sure they were dressed and sitting up with something to do to keep them amused during my absence......I'm glad I grew out of that! I do not play with them anymore, nor am I interested in other people's dolls. Mine just sit here on my windowsill keeping one another company. The ones shown here are the only ones I held onto after the tidy-up of our ancestral home last year. They are new-comers in the studio and can only gaze longingly upon The Dwelling as they are just too big to enter. 

I'm  not sure and I find it risky to try and explain one's work too much to oneself, let alone others, but the doll-as-a-blueprint has somehow fixed itself in my brain and seeing the small book-painting Ambition looks in the Glass juxtaposed with the dolls here, leads me to believe there is a great deal of subconscious cross-pollination happening in my head!

Or maybe I'm noticing this stuff because I see the images gathered here.

Whatever the case may be, I used an enlarged version - thanks to the miracle of photo copy -  of  Ambition as the template for a lino-cut I recently made in a workshop over at the Grafische Atelier in Den Bosch. What a great place that is btw. I managed to make 3 okay prints, I framed one (as can be seen further down below) and once back home I cut a smaller second version and made more prints, they did not all turn out great, but that gave me the freedom to get cutting them up and glueing them onto cardboard; from there I moved on to reworking older lino-cuts, and I cannot quite recall why but I remembered having tucked away my gran's postcard collection and I thought it would be fun to use these in combination with (failed) lino-prints for collages, together with drawings that didn't quite work for me plus the lettering.....thus adding to my ever expanding collection of critters on paper.

note the hands and part of the body of the big brown creature lying flat in the image above, they will return, cut up, in images farther down below

experimenting:

version number one from the workshop on the right, the smaller one I cut at home; these two have been glued onto cardboard and as I threaded a fishing line through one ear I might turn them into a mobile 

below, an old lino-cut I turned into a bird-like figure, turned out the hands and boots proved to be very versatile in the collages

again, I had to make several prints before I was satisfied with the result and I had lots of prints I could use for the collages:

'timid angel mouse'

'Spanish dancer'

fortunately some of the cards have titles, which I can use, 'cos sometimes I just can't think of one

'The Chrysalis'

'The girl of the golden west'

 

lots of pieces framed, I have decided to buy cheaper frames, because the really expensive wooden ones with museum quality glass which I had had made professionally for the Open Studio weekend last fall just aren't worth the cost compared to the artwork! plus some folks don't want wood, they want a black (or white) frame and I can easily remove the image from the ready-made shop bought ones; pricing one's work is never easy but this seems a more cost-effective solution, oh the exciting life of an artist;-)

may you enjoy February as the days lengthen and the light changes, each day as we walk the dogs along the river we notice how much brighter the skies are, it's details like this that make a 25 year marriage worthwhile