The Fickle Muse

I really am a terrible collage maker. This is because I have nothing to say on paper anymore.

I used to have a lot to say, Even though my collages were not great, I liked them because I know what they were saying. There was an underlying theme, concept, or idea that promoted the visual representation of it. Now I look helplessly at the blank paper and have nothing to say. But I add "stuff" to it anyway and that is why there is no soul to it. I am still going gangbusters with writing. Over the last 15 days I've written 32 essays for The End Time and 6 for The Quiet Life. I made 7 photo-verse artistic pictures ahead for my morning posting on The End Time Facebook page. I've gone gangbusters on personal photos as well. But visual art for art's sake...I'm drawing a blank.

These are some of my favorite past collages before the muse had left me:

Armageddon

Revelation 20:2-3 sealing satan in the pit

"Navigating Spiritual Waters"

Bad Moon Rising

And some paintings:

Van Gogh Meets Marsden Hartley

Irises

Mondrian-ish

Poppies

As art brut as my visual creative work is I believe one can see a theme to them, a unity, if not expert execution. But for some reason even that speck of a vestige of a crumb is gone. This is the kind of stuff I do now:

This one below was a workbook practice lesson, to collage quickly using only white. The quick part is to deny the analytical side of our brain, or the no-confidence, editing side of the heart, no room, and just see what moving hands can come up with. I could not resist using some black, not just some hues of white because I liked the gritty quality of the 70's photo book I ripped the boy from. Normally I like monochromatic, so looking for pieces that were only shades of white didn't bother me, but I just didn't have a lot of white on hand. Maybe I'll try with a different color tomorrow.

My paintings just aren't good. I'd titled the top one "Bird of Prey" but it just looks more like a chicken. The bottom one are Four Puppies Watching the Sunset (Ode to Poky Little Puppies) but there is just no color depth to the thing as at least with the index cards above I had that going for me.

I decided to go back to functional art: making books and journals, and bookmarks and tracts. Maybe that will release me for a while. It's what I know.

"The loveliest Muse in the world does not feed her owner; these girls make fine mistresses but terrible wives" ― Alfred de Vigny, Stello