I’ve played with the idea before of making a piece of work with both paper cut designs and drawing, but they were both smaller and simpler. Last week I sat down at my easel with the idea of creating something more complicated, and so I dove into making this new concentric circles piece.

I outlined the circles first and then worked on creating the alternating cut paper circles, leaving the drawing until last. As I worked on the drawing I really struggled with seeing the piece through to the end because it felt like it wasn’t working. While in process, I thought the drawings and cut designs were fighting against one another and the piece was far too busy overall.

I forced myself to keep going, and when I reached the end I could finally see that it all does work together. Now I view it as a powerful piece of work that is full of energy.

The full size of this paper cut & drawing is 14″ x 17″ on archival drawing paper.

This year I am determined to concentrate more on making the work I want to make and not just work towards fulfilling an obligation for a show. With this in mind last week when I was in the studio I decided to just play and see where it took me.

I started with a doodle using metallic gel pen on black paper, and made a few different clusters of patterns and lines around the same page. I wasn’t really satisfied with these so my next step was cutting the paper into circles and capturing the doodles I’d drawn so far within its own circle of black paper. I went on to fill each entire circle cut piece with its own distinct doodle, starting with the first three here.

I kept working on this over the next few days, and now I think I have about fifteen of these circles. I really like them.

I don’t know where I am going with this but that’s just fine. For awhile now I’ve need to play, and there’s no reason to stop just yet.