Collages, Theft, and Creativity at Play

One of my favorite ways to goof off in my journal is with collages. I like to just mentally checkout and have fun. There's no intention to create "real art" or even good art. There's no attempt at deep meanings (at least not intentional). It's just me stealing someone else's art and then making it my own. Pablo Picasso supposedly said, "Good artists copy, great artists steal." I'm certainly not a great artist, but I don't hesitate to steal like one when I want to have some fun.

This first one started with a painting from Carl Jung's haunting "Red Book". I printed it off and glued it into the center. I had been thinking a lot about the Brother's Grimm version of Cinderella and was intrigued with the white bird, so I used a combination of water color and pen and ink to draw in a background. 

“The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect 

but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. 

The creative mind plays with the objects it loves. ”

-Carl Jung 

This second one started with a photo of Georgia O'Keeffe, titled "Hands", by Alfred Stieglitz. I completely ruined what was an otherwise otherworldly photo. I cut it out and then debated what I wanted in the background. In an act of utter randomness, I chose to use the number Pi to the 1,000th digit in the background and pasted a portrait of Virginia Woolf  over the top. I used water colors and pen and ink for everything else. By the way, the water colors I use are just a cheap Crayola elementary school set. Like I said, I'm just playing here, not trying to make fine art.  

"Nobody sees a flower really; it is so small. 

We haven't time, and to see takes time."

-Georgia O'Keeffe

This last one started out with a portrait of the poet Pablo Neruda. I chose van Gogh's "Starry Night Over the Rhone" as the background, used a highlighter that happened to be lying on my desk at the time to color his ear, and wrote in a bunch of made up binary code on his hand with pencil.

"A child who does not play is not a child, 

but the man who doesn't play has lost forever the child 

who lived in him and who he will miss terribly." 

-Pablo Neruda

I posted these pages out of my journal just to show examples of creativity at play. Why did I choose the subjects I did? I don't know. Why did I draw and paint the stuff I did around and on them? I don't know. Ask a child why he/she is dancing around the room or building a sand castle. I doubt they know. It's nice to let go of having a reason why and just enjoy the act of creation. Why be such a control freak? I suggest you go grab some crayons and give yourself permission to create for no other reason than to lose yourself in the act.