Priscilla Foley Blackman
As a teacher of high school-age students, collage attracted me as a vehicle to encourage them to move beyond representational images. I asked that they select a work of their own creation, tear it into random pieces, and then concentrate on design while reassembling it into a new work. This process enabled them to engage their imagination in placing, altering, and adding other materials and subject matter to the image. Over time, using my own watercolors, I have adopted many of these same techniques.
Favorite themes include landscapes and water birds, although many other subjects such as people or a still life do make appearances. Dartmoor in England has become central to my work. It is a timeless place with dramatic vistas of sweeping spaces and open sky. It is barren hills with great stone formations jutting into the sky, it is turbulent creeks nurturing a tangle of vegetation along their banks, and it is grazing land for sheep, cows, and horses. All go their way without fences, undisturbed by human presence. Another favorite location is the island of San Miguel in the Azores. Here one sees a profusion of inactive volcanos as rounded shapes likes giant gum drops jutting into the sky and large craters. All are surrounded by incredibly beautiful flowers. The smell of the foliage is foreign to a nose familiar with New England. Nonetheless, it is pleasant and is a contributor to the exotic allure of the place.
I guess one can say that the natural beauty of an unscripted landscape gets me every time.