Abstraction from "leftovers"

Since I generally work from three altered files for my landscapes, I end up with a lot of leftover pieces of paper. Making abstract collages out of them allows me to work strictly with color and composition. I really love quilts, so this feels a bit like making an art quilt without having to fight with the sewing machine! After I'd finished the first one, I was showing a friend how it looked sitting on one side of the cradled panel, then rotated the square to see the next side, then -- he stopped me and said he liked it at the "half turn" so that it was a diamond shape. Oh YES - much more dynamic!!

Both of these are made with strips leftover from collages of landscapes of Montana, Wyoming, Illinois and Arizona...so the top one is "States of Mind" and the bottom one is "Altered States."