Paper Collage Saved my Creativity

I loved doing collage as a kid. I could spend hours carefully cutting pictures out of old magazines or catalogues with a pair of scissors, and gluing them into a cheap scrapbook to create surreal images. I continued this hobby into my teens, this time my collaging revolving around boybands and other male pin-ups who were snipped out and added to diaries and notebooks to create covers and breaks between pieces of writing.

Then something happened. I am not sure the precise time it occurred, but all of a sudden, I felt embarrassed by my collage. It seemed childish and something a woman then in her twenties ought not to be doing. All that joy and pleasure I had gained from finding images and cutting them out, spending hours over such work was gone. I had lost something without even realising it was gone.

I think at that same moment I lost my playfulness for art and, as a consequence, I gradually lost my motivation to draw and paint. My creativity seemed to have floundered as I tried too hard to make ‘meaningful’ art and eventually – inevitably – I stopped creating altogether.

Spin forward over a decade. It is 2020 and the UK has entered its first lockdown. I found myself suddenly with a lot more time on my hands, stuck at home, desperate for some form of distraction. It began with a chance glance at a crafting television channel which resulted in the purchase of some paper supplies. I enjoyed layering papers on card blanks, stamping and colouring, not realising I was returning to that old inner child and her love for collage.

The months rolled on. More craft supplies were purchased, but cards could only distract me for so long and then I needed something else, some way of expressing this new creativity blossoming inside me. It was then I discovered mixed media and a new delight swelled through me. I saw artists using collage to build up paintings. Sometimes it was just a background layer, sometimes the papers became part of the final image. As I explored these techniques, tentatively at first, it still did not occur to me that I was tapping into something deep within, a passion for cutting and pasting, for drawing together disparate images and making a whole.

The creativity I had disdained as a young adult was now embraced, wholeheartedly. I saw the power of making art for its own sake. It need not be for anyone other than me. My joy had renewed, my passion, but it had developed into something beyond a simple child’s happiness. I had discovered how my art, specifically my collage, could be used as a device to heal my soul during a difficult time. Collage was my route to mindfulness and a way of coping with the stresses of lockdown.

My favourite project came about when I was looking for a book to work on my collage in. I was considering buying a sketchbook, when I saw a video about repurposing old books for collage. The beauty of collage is that it covers whatever was on the page originally. I have quite a few old notebooks lying about the house (I am a stationary hoarder!) and it was as I was looking through these that I came across my diary from 2020.

It was a sorry thing, the first few pages filled up and then blank empty space. Some pages had scribbles through events and appointments that had been cancelled. It was a book of negativity, a reminder of lockdown and all the stresses that had produced.

Suddenly I had my inspiration. I would take this book that spoke about plans cancelled, dreams broken and turn it into something positive, a book of collage. This idea truly excited me and my diary is slowly filling up with the weird and wonderful ideas I come up with. There is no rhyme or reason to much of them, I have no intention of turning them into masterpieces, they are a means of playing, exploring, having fun, and working through some of the demons still lingering from the last eighteen months.

I can spend many hours with my scissors thoughtfully cutting out my paper pieces, then putting them all together again to form an image. It is incredibly satisfying and relaxing.

Sometimes I feel sad it has taken so long for me to rediscover this passion, but then I remember it is better to rediscover something than to lose it for good. I could still be considering collage a thing for kids only, and what a shame that would be!