A Love for Collage
Over the past ten years, I have created hundreds of collages. When I first started my therapeutic collage journey, I found that my intuitive collages helped me to release uncomfortable emotions. In my early days of collaging, I did not alway understand what my inner symbolism meant, yet the daily release of emotional pain was profound for me.
I love intuitively creating collages! It is truly my favourite art form because it is so easy, efficient, fun and expressive. Creating an intuitive collage simply involves cutting out, gluing and assembling various images to create a brand new picture. An intuitive collage does not need to make rational sense. When I create collage, I quiet my mind, choose imagery from my heart, and just play.
Emotional Release
Collage opens my conscious mind to insights and new ways of looking at my life. I have been so devoted to my collage practice over the years, I used to make several collages on my lunch hour at work!
Luckily, I worked in an art studio so I was able to gather up little paper scraps and bits all day! I am so collage enthused, my studio colleagues deemed me "The Collage Queen," and made me an official sign for my art cupboard!
Collage therapy, or Intuitive Collage as I call it, involves the free-associative choosing of imagery and words from old books and magazines.
Because collage is a projective technique, when you create without any preconceived intentions, you will tend to choose imagery, colours and words that reflect your unconscious thoughts and emotions.
The practical benefits of collage are:
~ Collages are easy to create. No artistic skills are required.
~ Materials for collage are readily available. Read Gathering Your Collage Materials HERE.
~ Collages are very quick to make. It is easy to create a small collage in under ten minutes.
The emotional benefits of collage are:
~ Intuitive collage bypasses your censoring mind and can surprise you with new information about your inner life.
~ Intuitive collage provides a "symbolic release" of emotions, even if you are not yet conscious of what they are.
~ Intuitive collage can help you to "meet" and accept the inner parts of yourself that you do not normally express from your socialized self. (Read: Creative Multiplicity.)
~ Intuitive collage expresses the various aspects of your personality in visual form, and this will help you to understand, organize and sort out your "inner landscape" so that you can witness it compassionately.
~ The imagery and colours in an intuitive collage can reveal emotions more powerfully than verbal self-expression. You will FEEL imagery on nonverbal levels.
Read: How to Create an Intuitive Collage HERE.
Read: How to Understand Your Intuitive Collage HERE.
