The Thought Police is my most recent collage. For the background, I used newspaper that I then colored in two shades of blue, rich silver and green. I like the image of the woman in the window. This is a sort of two-fold collage--getting at how women judge each other, but also how I have my own internal judge.  

My daughters think I'm fixated on naked women. Looking at this collection, I suppose I am. I think it has something to do with the beauty of the female form. Maybe also the sense that I'm feeling more naked in my life right now, so these pictures reflect that. Anyway, this was an attempt to be more whimsical, rather than to have my usual dark, ironic side showing.  

I did "The Cycle" for my boyfriend. I love this picture of him with his mother and I wanted to capture that connection between the two of them. I really struggled in pulling it all together, though, not sure how to handle composition or how to add depth and balance. I think that ultimately I succeeded. If nothing else I was successful because Darvin cried.  

I found the photo of the angel with the caption, "I Married an Angel" in a 1930s magazine. I cut it out, thinking about how men want to (or think) that they're marrying an angel, when the truth is that there's much hidden inside. I wanted that to come across in this collage. 

After Dark was my first attempt at scanning a collage. The original was done on canvasette that quickly curled and looked terrible. I'd used too much water with the gold paint. But the scanned image looks amazing--like the women are on fire.  

I'm nervous about including this collage on the web. It's one of my first attempts at collage and it represents what I was dealing with at the time around the sexual abuse I experienced as a child. It's very raw, both in execution and in the feelings it exposes. Up until now, it's been hidden away in a journal that I had purchased to use for this kind of expression. There are collages that are even more painful to look at, but I'm not sure I'm ready to include those here yet. If nothing else I wanted to post this to make my "secret shame" less secret--after all, it wasn't my shame to begin with.