Yes. New collages. And black and white is back.

Still on textured canvas, still with foundational black gesture in either charcoal or acrylic paint, still deli paper collage, but minus the overall color stain. And now with brayered collage pieces!

I did a lot of monoprinting earlier this year, and one byproduct of printing with a gel press is stacks of paper with brayer marks on them. After using a brayer to spread paint over the press, the brayer gets rolled across waste sheets to remove the excess paint. “Brayering-off” is what this is called. And the brayering off sheets can be quite intriguing. As one is always in haste when brayering off, there is no thought put to arrangement on the waste sheet – you just get it off your brayer as fast as you can, so you can get back to completing your print before the paint dries on your plate.

In my case I used my favorite translucent deli paper for this purpose, and by the end of my several months of printing last spring and summer I had quite a few. I knew as I set each aside that I was going to find a use for them.

I had some canvases that I had prepared for collaging as usual with the process I’ve used the last couple years, but I started throwing some of these brayer-off sheets on them while the canvases were still black and white, and there was definitely an appeal. It brought back to me the power of black and white that had had me in its thrall in 2020 and 2021, in the Carbon series.

Let’s call it the new new look. Collage isn’t done with me yet! You’ll be seeing some more images soon.

And why did I title this piece “Constant”? Because it is constant, isn’t it, people? That race, that chase after…mmm, does it really matter what?

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