100 Collages in 100 Days, #1 - #12, December, 2021

#1 December 20, 2021

Each year I try to do a 100-day creative project. It’s a commitment I make to learning small, focusing keenly and seeing what emerges.  It is a time for me to spend a few months practicing. This year from Solstice, 2021 to Equinox, 2022–-I will create 100 quickly made collages and see what I learn about design, palette, mixed media, and opaque and transparency.  The 100DAYProject can be found here.  #thecreativepractice 

So far I’m learning that as I am thinking (a)long, I am working fast, limiting my palette, and mostly playing.  What gets made, gets made.  I am borrowing heavily from what I learned with Karen Stamper in the course I just finished of hers, Free Up Your Sketchbook and Grow." 

I mostly have used hand-painted tissue paper, commercial tissue paper, found papers, black, white, and sepia ink; limited acrylic paints, black and white markers, pencil, gesso, oil pastels, and matte medium. The substrate for each has been watercolor paper. 

#2 December 21, 2021

#3, December 23, 2021

#4, December 24, 2021

#5, December 25, 2021

#6 December 26, 2021

#7 December 27, 2021

#8 December 28, 2021

#9 December 29, 2021

#10 December 30, 2021

#11 December 31, 2021

8 Panels from Concertina Journal

A valuable learning I am hoping to hold on to is the idea of trusting the patience/time needed to see work emerge that can be followed. It has required layering on top of the familiar—the bit of design I first wanted to preserve and being responsive to what is emerging even when what is happening looks like a holy mess. 

Work. Stop. Walk away. Return and add a bit here, a bit on another page, work out of the journal, cover, scrape off and so on.  New panels are posted below. 

In the Fall Garden: 7 Made Images

 A few weeks ago I made images in a public garden.  I think the work I have been doing as a painter influenced the quasi-abstract quality of these images. All images were made using a Nikon 3500 camera. I hope you enjoy.

Shadows in Purple Thrill Me (M.A. Reilly, 2021)

Autumn Diptych (M.A. Reilly, 2021)

Late Fall (M.A. Reilly, 2021)

Purple and Brown (M.A. Reilly, 2021)

Waiting for a Vase (M.A. Reilly, 2021)

November (M.A. Reilly, 2021)

Poppies (M.A. Reilly, 2021)