I was inspired by artist Howardena Pindell’s mixed media work on unstretched canvas. She includes a lot of circles of various sizes and also uses a healthy dose of glitter. I made my own version, placing my circles in a more tailored pattern, and layering them. I was thinking of biological matter such as pollen on flowers (the pink with little yellow circles) and cross-sections of plant ovaries (the green and red layered circles). The overall shape is of a fish. “Yu” is the Chinese word for fish. And the colorful, bright forms are like who “you” are thinking of. I also think that it looks like a ton of colorful sushi.
The entire surface of the paper (except for the red portion at the bottom) is covered in sparkly modge podge. This adds a rainbow shimmery effect. Creating this collage was a good break from oil. I sat on the floor painting paper and cutting out circles to paste in a pattern. This is the first painting/collage where I reference my biology background and learning of Chinese. Moving forward, I might incorporate more aspects like these into some of my paintings.
