Women’s Retreat: Reconstructing an Image Through Collage with Mary Prince

Using colored scraps of paper and your powers of observation, you will explore how the unique, expressive power of collage can transform an existing image of your choice. You’ll create variations of an image of a painting you have made, a painting you admire, or a photograph you would like to reinvent.

Mary Prince, a collage artist, oil painter, and printmaker, will lead this workshop and share ways collage can simplify and transform your picture-making process and images.

Both experienced artists and beginners are welcome. One of the beauties of collage is that it does not require prior experience. Please feel free to bring any colored paper you would like to use. Materials are included. We will have paper, but you may have a particular color or textured paper you want to try.

Our Morning:

• Coffee and conversation
• An overview of how Mary uses collage to transform her paintings, showing examples.
• We will then delve into straight-line drawings of an image of your choice. Based on these drawings, we will create a series of quick, small collage variations of that image in different palettes and shapes.

Lunch followed by a Nature Walk – While we eat, we can look at some examples of artists who use collage to simplify and abstract their imagery. We can also discuss questions and observations from the morning’s work.

Our Afternoon:

• We’ll settle down to a concentrated, longer interpretation of your image. As we collage, we will focus on collage as a means to streamline our execution of making a vibrant image. What is the essential in what we want to express? What are the big moves? What are the big shapes? What color and value shifts best express those big moves? And how do we express the underlying geometry of what we see? These are a few questions that collage addresses and helps us envision a vibrant image as we choose colors and cut shapes to organize the image. By the end of the afternoon, we will be on our way to completing a small reinterpretation of our chosen image. This process, using cut paper, renders an image quite different from one executed by brush or a camera. It offers a new means of discovering your own unique point of view.
• We’ll wrap up by 3:30, when we can join together to share our experiences and discoveries.

Lunch is included.

About Mary Prince

Trained originally as an abstract painter in the tradition of Hans Hoffman, Mary Prince explores the dynamics of light, color, and texture of her surrounding world. Her paintings and prints vigorously capture the atmospheric changes that animate nature, whether the rugged coastline and pristine islands of the Northeastern coast of Maine or the exuberant fabrics and glassy objects of the still life. The artist often pursues and elaborates upon her motifs in a variety of media: oil paint, collage, watercolor, ink wash, and prints.

View more of Mary’s work here. 

Schoodic, Jack Pines, 26″ x 18″, Collage, 2024

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