Collage art: The Science of Love

One of my early Collage efforts that actually worked out well is The Science of Love.

My premise for this work is Shakespeare. I get lots of inspiration from Shakespeare's works.

Midsummer Night's Dream Quote, Partially obscured

 In this particular work, I was inspired by the quote from A Midsummer Night's Dream;  (above). It has to do with finding a certain flower, that when you rub the juice of the flower on a person's eyelids while they sleep, the first person they see when they wake up they will fall madly in love with.

So, I thought, what if a scientist decided to distill the juice of this fabled flower, and make a potion from it, so that the lady he adores will finally notice him and return his affections.

I used a lot of different images that depict the scientific method, including prints of old microscopes, Da Vinci's Matruvial Man, and the diagram of a heart.

Closeup of Matruvial Man and antique postcard of a young lady

 Above: I used different layers of Golden Fluid acrylics paints on Canvas, adding the image of Matruival Man in the corner, and then painting over it. I also did some paint daubs in green and in white along the edge of the postcard of the girl to emulate a flower bower. I painted her hair a deep shade of red, and pasted the word "Adore" to the image.

I imaged my scientist as being shy, quiet, withdrawn into his plant studies. He gazes longingly at his beloved,

She does not know he exists. So, he makes a potion to help love along, in the hope of bringing true love into his life.  Will it work? It is an experiment after all!

definition of science from the dictionary, photocopied,

Above, after the canvas has has several layers of thin glazing to bring out colors, I added the snippet of text photocopied from the dictionary, the definition of science. I layered it with glazes of Titan Buff to obscure some of the text to give it interest, and used blending techniques of paint to hide the corners of the pasted text page and to blend the addition into the painting. The butterfly was added from a vintage domain free clip art disk, printed on matte photo paper using an Epson Photo printer. The Thistle is an ink outline of a photograph I took many years ago, using the filter in photoshop to make the image into an ink outline.  Paint daubs and some French script text behind the drawing of the heart add depth and interest and also help to blend the images together in an abstract collage composition. 

Clip are of an antique microscope and some textured areas blotted with paint

I added the microscope, and some random block letters to the upper right hand corner, to complete the visual idea of science and the scientific method. I used some heavy gel medium to breat lines of raised texture below the microscope, and some more layers of paint and glazings to add depth to the area. Note how the letters from the French text seem to just emerge from the canvas. That's a lot of glazes of paint to make it look that way.

Full sized image, a 16 x 20 canvas collage using paint, text, quotes, postcards, found art, clip art, and lots of time and imagination. The collage took several months to complete. 

The Science of Love, by Lily Silver, 2011