Canvas Art - French Papers

A few weeks ago I got message in my inbox from my local art museum. They said that they are organizing a fundraiser in May that will be an exhibit of art, with the individual pieces up for auction. They were asking artist to donate ready-to-hang art for the event.

I decided I will create something and donate it. Since I've been working on creating collages on a canvas, I wanted to make one using something I have a lot of: papers with French text, and French correspondence--mostly postcards.

My bits and pieces

Once I selected all my papers and set them aside, I laid them on my canvas and played around with placement. I have these lovely playing cards from the 1940s, with a beautiful design in blue. I discovered that if I tear a card into 3 pieces, I can use them as accents in my large collages. I like that I can break up the basic beige tones of aged paper with bits of color.

The vintage roses help too, along with postage stamps, of course. I got the vintage rose prints from this online store. They carry so many of these printed images, originally from Germany. I have a whole drawer full. I can't resist them!

The postage stamps are from a series printed from 1900 to 1929, called "Liberty and Peace". I like how they are the same stamp, just different colors. They were designed by Nicolas Luc-Olivier Merson.

Putting it together

The part that takes the longest is the adhering of the papers to the canvas. I use double-sided scor tape. I am a bit disappointed that some of the papers are warped and therefore not laying completely flat, but I did the best I could do. I didn't want to use gel medium to adhere the papers because I wanted to preserve the look and feel of the original papers.

Here's the overall canvas.

Here are some close ups.

Next I need to get it framed. I don't want to spend a fortune on getting something framed that I am going to give away, but if it's going up for auction, it has to look nice and also need to be ready to hang. I have a local framing shop that I've been meaning to stop in at. I'll check it out and see what their pricing is like.