Making it messy

An Exercise in Frustration

What colour is frustration?

That’s where I started this evening’s collage. I pulled out my stash of fabulous origami paper and was initially looking at stark colours I might use as some sort of torn background but then was struck by how obnoxious some of the patterns were. They reminded me of mazes with no exits, or stark lines with no variations.

The patterns made me think of constraints, confusion, irritation, and being boxed in.

From there, I thought about how sometimes you set out on what you think is a clear path (the unobstructed footprints) until you hit a wall. And, of course, on the other side of the wall is something you imagine to be beautiful - freeing. I considered giving the butterfly an escape route, but then I decided to take a more depressing turn and box the butterfly in as well. Imagine the grass greener over on the butterfly’s side of the world except - no grass.

Because this all sort of developed in a wild slurry of Mod Podge and shredded paper, I didn’t plan ahead and underpaint with anything suitably bleak. Instead, I used an eye dropper and fountain pen ink over the top which immediately started to run everywhere. Tissue to the rescue! Except, the tissue stuck to the glue and ink combo and wound up adding a strange, soft 3-D texture to the whole thing.

I’ll call this an unhappy accident. Or, more formally, “An Exercise in Frustration.”

Have you ever had this happen? That you sit down with no real idea of where you’re headed and one thing leads to another until you wind up with something that, weirdly enough, looks like there may have been a plan?