Letting the Work Speak to Me

Variation on a Theme no. 5
8x10"

Working with this large, curved, white collar was a challenge.  I guess it was the fact that it is so large on this 8x10" piece of paper and that it has such an organic nature.  A lot of my work tends to be more geometric.  So it is good to work against the grain, so to speak.  There was lots of staring...me staring at the big white collar and the big white collar just staring back.  I was waiting for the work to speak to me.  Sometimes it does; sometimes I just have to guess at what the work wants.  I think in the end the big white collar did not want to be so big, so visible.  The addition of the woven belt and the stained tea bags on the left helped the composition as did the pink circles on the right.
Over all, this Variations Series is telling me I need to work with smaller collage pieces when working in this size range.
But I did not learn the lesson soon enough.  I have already started and almost completed Variation no. 6 which also has a pretty large collage element.