New Work: Bye Bye Blues

Bye Bye Blues
collage on paper
image size 15" x 18"

The title of the piece is taken from a song that was playing while I was working. Bye Bye Blues performed by Cab Calloway and his orchestra, is a much sung and recorded jazz standard from 1930. If interested, a brief history of the piece is here. Where would we all be today without such great music to listen to? 

I admit that this piece almost didn't get finished. I don't remember ever giving up on one of these collage pieces before but I certainly was ready to do that this time. My notes say that I want to work with bigger shapes and larger areas of color. Fewer shapes really. My reasoning has to do with working bigger in general. These pieces are small. Working bigger would, in my mind, require larger shapes, more contrast and perhaps greater chroma. Seeing things from a distance is very different from seeing them close up. I know from being at shows and museums that value and color patterns are very obvious from across the room. They can be strong and draw a person in. Not so much close up, however. Close up is for details right? This is just how I see things. I got all bunched up with this though as I was working and got very stuck. I didn't get unstuck until I hit on the idea of adding more of the darker blue color. Things started to come together after that.

Maybe there is a lesson here not to give up so easily. Can't be sure. I would like to have more curvilinear (my word) shapes rather than strictly rectilinear shapes. That is my own idea. How to do it though I don't know. Not yet anyway. 

OK, almost Friday! Yippee! I have gone to the grocery store and am ready for any rain that might actually fall out of the sky, no matter how small the amount. 

Thanks for reading and commenting,

Libby