Submerged

This is a mixed media collage on canvas that I made using more of the monoprints I talked about in my last post. I call this one, "Submerged" because after I finished it I noticed it looked like the little girl was submerged in water.

The story behind this one: The image of the girl in the center is from my work with the Digital Grounds that I talked about a while back. This particular image was printed out onto two layers of molding paste and a layer of pearl mica flake. I loved how it looked when it was finished and was very happy with all of the images on that particular piece of molding paste.

I don't know if you remember but I mentioned later that I had tried to "seal" those with the recommended sealer that came with the Digital Grounds kit. It was a satin finish, I think. After I applied it to the whole sheet of molding paste images, they all started to get this green tint! I was horrified! All of my beautiful images were now green-y. Big Disappointment. But I kept them anyway, thinking I'd be able to do something with them. I'd worked so hard to make those. But I did end up making a lot more of the molding paste/mica flake images and they are all safe and just as nice as the first ones! Lesson learned: do NOT seal the molding paste! ;)

Anyway, back to this image. I mentioned before that I'm working on a series around the theme, "Finding My Way Home". This all centers around the death of my mom and my still trying to come to terms with my grief. The first canvas had the title, "No Tears In Heaven". After finishing this one, I just saw water images... the greens, the blues, even the mica flakes looked like air bubbles under water. Then I thought about how I felt when I learned of Mom's death: like I was drowning... with grief, loss, anger, all of it. So, without even planning it the little girl and her green image fit perfectly in this piece. Here is a closeup of that image:

After looking at it for awhile I noticed what look like tears coming out of her eyes in a little trail. I don't know when that happened; probably when I was adhering the image to the canvas. It even adds more to the piece! Just another "accident" that brings more meaning to it for me. If you look real closely you'll see part of a very thin mica tile over her eyes. There's another little piece of mica in the bottom right part of her photo which you can't see at all. After placing those down it really looked like a shattered window. I like that effect a lot.

And here's another view taken from a different angle. It was hard to get the little girl to show up in the photos due to the glare coming off of the mica.

This photo was taken BEFORE I added the numbers and finishing touches that you see in the first photo. The "5" is in reference to five years since she died and the "April" and "94" are in reference to when she died. I am just now able to start looking at all of this material without completely shutting down. It's my way of working through it all and FINDING MY WAY HOME.