Painting With Scissors

I have a pair of gold scissors saved. I toyed with the idea of pairing them with the slightly macabre pop art-esque yellow-haired baby dolls head… but I think both of those are rare finds so I’m saving them. So far I’ve stuck mostly to deers.

I use a lot of deers. They were on a yellow paper bag that contained a sample of a coffee facemask – the kind you use to wash off – this was acquired pre-Covid. Both the mask and bag were free and that fact makes me too happy! The bag has probably gone straight into an inconceivable amount of bins (or trash cans – depending on where you are in the world). Most people wouldn’t have considered the many uses you could find for vibrant pink, yellow and red deers or even taken just a moment to appreciate the design aesthetics.

That’s the beauty of arts and crafts – taking the time to find; then demonstrate the beauty in the things we largely overlook – even repurposing in the process. The mostly ignored deers have been a centerpiece for several compositions.

I’ve prepped and played around with other ideas and elements too. I saved a paper picture frame – cutting out its’ original picture to replace with something else – a better idea in concept than its’ cut-through-the-frame execution. I have some Matisse inspired shapes saved from the zoom class: ‘Painting with Scissors’ that inspired my descent into creative madness. It makes me feel like the pretentious artist I once successfully avoided being.

Case in point - my eccentric sense of humour has meant sticking a heavily hole-punched scrap of vibrant patterned paper over the top of a tiny little group portrait thumbnail in muted colours - saved from an old (free!) art magazine. The kind of creative approach that would have probably inspired wet dreams from my university art tutors. The sort of thing they would have even done themselves, and I would have not been impressed by! The faces beneath poke through but you have to look closer to make sense of the details and it also doesn’t make any sense.

Collage doesn’t have to make sense. You don’t have to be neat and ordered and perfect. You don’t have to have any plans or preconceptions about what you are going to produce. It’s not so easy to negatively compare yourself against other artists when your particular collection of resources are completely unique to you. You just start playing about with what you have and you like. Pairing elements, shapes and colours together and seeing what works then sticking it down.

Colours that have no place existing next to each other are the most fun to play around with – especially when the objects also mismatch. Like pairing yellows and teals against brown, or garish pinks and yellows together with more muted colours. Sticking what doesn’t and shouldn’t work together in a way that does. Finding the harmony in chaos.

It’s not so easy, however, to find harmony in my bedroom once I’m done. Within 5 minutes I can easily make 1 hours worth of tidying - and I wish that statement was hyperbolic. The indecision that leaves me when I’m making is eager to return once tidying begins. Agonizing over which paper scraps to bin and which to keep. There’s a really fine line between the parts too small to use and the kind of delicate pieces that help balance a collage out. I try to lay the scraps I’m more likely to use again at the top of the beautiful green, gold and orange chocolate box I use to store the smallest scraps. Then when I take it out again I just end up emptying the whole contents carelessly onto the table repeating the aggravating tidying process for myself once again. Once you go down the route of trying to save and recycle objects to create you can easily enter excess and gain a hoarders’ mentality!

I think my struggles organizing my room directly physically reflect my struggles organizing and making any sense of my chaotic, excessive thought process. But I’ll try to organize my thoughts on what I think makes collage so magic.

I’ve been painting and drawing portraits long enough to have acquired the technical skill level of a professional artist (though sadly I’m allergic to business skills so any learning of how sales work may result in streaming eyes). When you get to that level you can start to feel stuck from the social and personal pressure of wanting or being expected to produce exceptional work all the time. Especially when in other areas of your life you have felt so unaccepted and excluded.

I got myself to a stage of perfectionism where nothing happened. I couldn’t live up to the standards I’d set myself so nothing even got started and I wasn’t enjoying art enough anymore. My original goals had been hyper-realistic art and when I got better at realism I felt my work had declined in skill because it lost the charm. Things like the slightly too big eyes or the colours being less accurate compared to the original photo made them more fun. It took me a while to realize while comparing myself negatively against myself - my skills had actually got technically better. It’s just the goal was wrong.

It would be great for this piece if I could say that collage single-handedly snapped me out of that, helping me enjoy art and start making again but it didn’t. That process took time and the accumulation of small positive choices that snowballed in effect. And I think that’s an essential thing to remember – seeking dramatic changes in one large leap is too impractical for us to even begin.

Would you reach the top of the stairs quicker by trying to take just one step from bottom to top or by climbing one at a time? Dramatic positive changes happen by choosing small things and gaining momentum. Collage was a small choice. A creative outlet I still avoid exploring that often because of the intense tidying-up process a session requires.

But what collage did do is remind me how to access the state of mind necessary for making your best work. Allowing me to let go momentarily of the perfectionism that stifles me. To rediscover how to find the sense of fun and joy in creating that leads to the outcome taking care of itself. So much of making ‘good’ art is psychological, the best results are always from enjoying the process. Conversely, trying to force results leads to worse results.

And this is always something I try to remind myself applies directly to life. If you want something too much you can end up making it fail by forcing it too much. You can’t do exceptional at what you hate. This even applies to ourselves – if we hate who we are we can’t access our best. Creativity teaches us that the process matters most and when we let go of outcome enough to enjoy the process the results are taken care of. It teaches us to trust in the process and that life unfolds best when we relax enough to trust we can cope with any problems that arise.

And if you’ve lost touch with enjoying creating there is magic in being a beginner again. Set your expectations back to zero. Try something new.