Over the past few months I’ve been working on experimenting with taking the work in a new direction involving layered pieces of cut paper. I’ve wanted to explore this idea for awhile but couldn’t quite get my head around how, until recently. I’ve been working with Yupo paper for these pieces, starting with the small prototype I shared in a previous blog post.

One my struggles around layering was how to retain the elaborate designs of the cutting across multiple layers of paper and have them not become a big jumble of busyness. Should I cut the entirety of each layer or part of each one, was the big question. With the piece pictured here I created each layer to overlap slightly and used alternating lightness and darkness of the same colour to differentiate. I think it worked out really well.

The work is titled, Dreaming in Colours Borrowed From The Sea and is inspired by the repetition of ocean waves. It’s approximately 14” x 11” with six layers of hand-cut Yupo paper painted with gouache.

This is the second of two pieces I’ve created for an upcoming show titled, On The Same Page: Transforming Paper, happening in May as part of Crafted Vancouver. More details to come!