Week 6: The Woods with Secret Doorways

This week’s collage explores the idea of art-making as a doorway to the Self.  I have had this experience whether working with imaginary subjects, or responding to the observed world.  Working from one’s imagination, perhaps that door opens more readily.  But it is almost more wondrous and surprising when suddenly an observed subject opens up to be a reflection of your own core being.  It happens when an art-making experience allows you to contact a part of yourself that is new to you, or feels new again. It can manifest itself in the way you see color, or recognize a particular detail, or understand the way shapes fold and fit together like scattered puzzle pieces that miraculously become whole. It can happen when you simply notice something in the world that becomes special to you, and you then translate it in your own way.

The woods behind my house continually draw me in as a place of visual intrigue and mystery. As I notice each individual branch, leaf, or fragment of light, it is as if a tiny door opens to a new revelation. If I walk through that door, what will I find? What new world awaits and what can I become there? Anything is possible.

The Woods with Secret Doorways, 12 x 12, acrylic and paper on panel