Happy Accidents...

   When my students use to make "mistakes" with their artwork, mistakes that actually  produce something interesting, I use to call them "happy accidents".  I had one myself the other day!

   I was printing out some interior images of an old house an acquaintance of mine is restoring when I inadvertently over printed an image.  Of course, my first reaction was, "Darn, what a waste of ink."  Then I looked at the result.

   I really loved the way the two images combined.  It was pure chance that these two images came together to create a beautiful abstract composition...a total accident.  I did play around with it a bit...inverted one of the images and altered the contrast and color balance until I got the image to this state.  It was great fun!

   I tried it, intentionally this time with two other house interiors, to see if I could make another "happy accident".  This has been the winter of coloring outside the lines for me so, why not!  I thought that I may have stumbled onto another avenue to explore...the layered image.

   The second one wasn't as successful, in fact it was down right horrible, I really didn't know what I was doing and simply over printing wasn't the way forward I realized.  This didn't put me off the idea of exploring digital photo collages further, perhaps even incorporating words in the composition.  The contemplative possibilities of this kind of image are endless.

   So I set out to teach myself a way to layer and "cut and paste" digitally.  The connection to the SoulCollage® process was so tempting.  It took me awhile to stumble my way through until I was able to create a digital collage.  Some I printed out for my SoulCollage® deck while others I added quotes to.  It was so exciting for this technologically challenged person to create in this way.  It also was a way to incorporate all the images I'd done of statuary in the past.

    The image on the right was made with a photograph I took out the window of the plane on my way to St. John, a photograph of a sculpture I made at the Museum of Fine Arts along with two more.  I love the quote by Merton and it seemed a perfect inspiration for my up coming trip. 

    Now, I realize digital photo collage is nothing new but I would never have even considered this photographic art form if I hadn't had my "happy accident".  Perhaps this is just another example of a serendipitous inspiration..the Universe's way of tapping us on the shoulder and pointing us in a new direction.  Synchronicity seems to be a current theme of late!  This kind of thing happens to me all the time when I'm traveling...coming across a location I had not set out to find...but this is the first time my printer brought me to a whole new place on my contemplative journey!

   I've created an album of my digital collages to date.  I invite you to take a peek and maybe you might be inspired to create on with your own collages from your contemplative imagery.

Digital Collages - An Album