Collage shortcuts

To a friend asking me how I felt now, I replied: mortal!
Till my operation, I had never really thought of being so vulnerable – accidents happening to others. The same has been true for my mother of whom I don’t remember any serious illness or accident till her 90ies. My father had a heart attack in his 50ies, stopped smoking cigars and went happily on till his 70ies, when his mind got confused. And I am heading to my 70th anniversary.
It occurs that I have been working on a collage that is strongly linked to this theme. It started quite simply with a picture showing to young ladies. The frontality of the figures changed radically when I stuck the fragment of a face on the right figure.

The body movement became contradictory, an oscillation between front and rear – an effect I cherish because I want the picture to move. The left figure than got another torso, creating a forward draught opposed to the right receding figure. At this stage, the collage looked quite incomplete, but the main element was there.

I then worked on the left head, thinking of an embrace

– but, who is hugged? The old man? Or is he leaving the young one? And if it is so, then where is he going? I don’t know the answer and this ignorance is the proof of the collage magic which goes its own ways, by the means of its con-junctions of fragments (I feel that I put more of them into my pictures), telling me a story about ageing, love and future separations.