Joined Together

Two years prior to my wife’s 50th Birthday, we embarked on yet another project together. I had an idea to create a complete series of pieces dedicated to Linda as the subject. She agreed to model for me for several months and the imagery would be used for inlaid paper collages. The process of making inlaid collages is labor-intensive with many steps involved. I spent months prior to drawing Linda, painting hundreds of patterns on paper in preparation for constructing the collages.

I selected a palette of painted patterns to work with for each drawing we would use. Sheets from the palette were stacked on top of each other and a drawing of Linda was transferred on the back of the stack. Staying faithful to the drawing, I cut the design out with an Exacto knife, making sure to keep all the pieces intact in the stack. This process provides multiple identical pieces for each image drawn. For the next step, the pieces are moved around and fit together like marquetry to delineate and accentuate the drawing. The end result is several (up to 4) identical designs, with the completely different color placement of Linda and her surrounding environment.

(click images to view closer details)

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