This is a 20"x 24" acrylic/oil painting/ collage I also exhibited in the "YeeHaw" show at Inspirations Gallery. The mountains were originally part of an oil painting my mother had done sometime in the 1960's. She did two paintings both with mountains as their focal point. I do not know what happened to the other painting. My mother passed in 2004 and my father in 2012 and in clearing out the house for sale, I kept the painting feeling that one day I would use it as a base for something. I liked the shape and shading of the mountains but was not a fan of the pastel shades (so popular at the time) used to depict desert scenes. When the call went out for the "YeeHaw" exhibit I immediately thought of my mother's painting and went to work.
The painting had been done on a canvas board, so I tore the canvas free from the backing then, YIKES! tore around the painted mountains and tore the rest of the canvas into smaller pieces saving interesting sections and textures. I placed the mountain art as the focal point onto the larger cradled board and using the bits and pieces of my mother's art and gessoed water color paper I began building the collage. Enlarging the mountains, using bright rich colors and creating new and interesting images brought it all into cohesion, creating the completed image below.
