My love for cubism led me to experiment with collage. A collage is a composition made from mixed media conveying an idea. Collage as an art form begin in the early 20th century with the popular cubists.
My assignment was to pick a concept and make a collage out of it. As a concept I focused on media choice and the media I chose was art work – paintings, drawings, cut and paste collages – created by my four-year-old son.
With all the vibrant materials before me I automatically thought of a most colourful animal – the peacock. I used an unfinished acrylic floral painting of mine for the background and set out cutting and pasting my son’s art work in the shape of a peacock.
18 x 24″Acrylic and mixed media collage
The collage incorporated stickers, paint, tape and my sons’s first attempts at writing his name: I is for Ismail. See how many ‘I’s you can find in the picture.
My assignment then required to paint a picture using the collage. It was fun and tedious to translate the 3D effects from the collage into the painting.
18 x 24″ acrylic on mixed media paper
My art colleagues interpreted the painting in many different ways :
– a Phoenix rising from the ashes
– a peacock as the national bird of India
– Islamic patterns such as Turkish tiles
– a proud bird looking upon itself
Please leave a comment to share how you interpreted this painting!
