DAGMARA GENDA

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EVER GREEN

These collages, like "Cutting Out The Snow" were a reaction against the ever more illustrative bent arising in my work. In order to go back to considering the relationship between form and content, I decided to use photographs of leaves as a sort of brushstroke. Rather than brushing onto "grids" (whether these grids were made of architectural elements, wallpaper patterns or drawings of animals) I used a set of strokes to create geometric forms. Again, the tension between planned and organic was present, but in an inverted way.

The plant that I used for these collages was the English Laurel. I photographed the bush at various times of day, so as to capture the light in different ways. I then isolated individual leaves in photoshop, printed these leaves and cut them out. These were the raw material for collages. The English Laurel is a bush that is often pruned into architectural and geometric forms. It is an evergreen that forms a stable foundation for English garden design.

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