12" x 12"
acrylic on canvas
My sister-in-law and I hatched a plan to have her three young daughters make collages which I would then use as inspiration pieces to create a painting for each of them. I sent off a box of pictures, paper and glue sticks and the girls got to work. There were hundreds of pictures, of everything imaginable, for them to choose from so it was a little amazing to me when they finished the collages to see how themed they each were. The only instruction I gave them was to choose pictures of things they liked. Emily's collage was made up of pictures of food, animals and a smattering of cold weather clothing. Emily has a big, outgoing, happy, bright personality and she can be surprisingly (at her young age) empathetic. A big, bright, in-your-face Kaleidoscope image seemed appropriate. I think the fact that I know my nieces fairly well actually worked against me when trying to distill imagery for their paintings from their collages...overall, it was a much harder process than I had imagined and took quite a long time.
