I Can’t Get No Satisfaction

At least with this one collage. I theoretically finished it a couple months ago. But there was just something about it that bugged me. So I propped it up on the living room mantel to live with it and see if I could figure out what was wrong.

I finally realized that one area in the upper third of the piece was really not a shape compatible with the rest. It was jarring. I asked someone whose opinion I trust what they thought about it. Of course, in the way these things work, they hated a different section, also in the upper third. So now every time I looked at it, I saw both of these flawed areas.

Last night I couldn’t stand it another second. I took a knife to it and sliced through all the layers and removed the entire upper third of the piece. Because of the way I assemble my collages, this was really the only option. Each piece of paper is laid down overlapping the previous paper that I placed, then it is adhered to the substrate, then the next piece of paper is positioned overlapping it, and so on.

Today I am preparing and painting papers to see if I can finally get a result that I am happy with. While the papers dry, I guess I should clean up the mess from last night’s deconstruction.