WHAT IS COLLAGE AND HOW DID KEENI KESSLER GET INTO COLLAGE? 30/11/2020
COLLAGE
Let us look more closely at collage and see what it really is. “Collage art is ‘a technique of composing a work of art by pasting on a single surface, various materials not normally associated with one another.’”
KEENI KESSLER’S COLLAGE TECHNIQUE.
After hesitating for many years, as she was unsure of her art, she finally “jumped” and despite a very bad back condition, would spend hours over her concert piano, using it as a table….. Paper cuttings everywhere, scissors, glue, magazines half destroyed, ribbons, pieces of textile, pens and crayons, and all sorts of materials. The fact that she chose to work on collages rather than charcoal, paint or pen to make sceneries and/or etch familiar people was probably made as she probably felt it was much freer.
At a certain time of day, she would decide to start working, and would do so for hours on end, until her back was too painful and then she would stop or take a break.
First there would be some photos from a magazine, that she would cut out in the shape that she deemed appropriate for her “tableau”. Then, she would have long pieces of paper that she would roll, making it like a long “roll”, covering it in glue, then painting it, and putting said “rolls” on her tableau, depending where the parts/pieces of the photograph would be placed on her background drawing paper (thick, making for a good backing). Then, pencils and special ink pens would enter the dance, to complete the designs, shapes. One can clearly feel the influence of the East in her creations, be it India, or other Eastern places. I could only see it from the “outside”, as she was a rather private person. But reminiscing about her “Italian” life, she would often be taken for Venetian, given her blond hair, light complexion, and blue eyes (she spoke Italian like a native, more like a Florentine, rather than a Venetian! But had been to Venice…and admired it fiercely. The staging port of the Silk Road in ancient times…. Maybe there are more links than meet the eye!