Louise Laplante

mixed media, collage

My work mines the past, using the remnants of it found in old paper, recognizing its’ relevance to the present and its richness in image. I collage these pages on drawing paper to serve as the background for my drawings. These can be pages from one book, a group of related letters, or a jumble of different, unrelated sheets, their words forming the wellspring for the images I place on it. Each motif I draw in pastel on the resultant sheet relates in its own way to those words. I rub the chalk into the sheet for a rich deep tone adding lines that burst from each image to add movement, sometimes using several sheets butting them together to create a larger surface on which to draw. My drawings reflect the pieced together nature of both our memory and relationship to the world. There is great beauty in the old, yellow, foxed paper, in its stains and marks, and the birds, animals, hats or other motifs I place on those sheets and the way they speak to each other.