Collage shortcuts

Warning: "continue" targeting switch is equivalent to "break". Did you mean to use "continue 2"? in /home/bstep754/public_html/blog/inc/plugins/model/_plugins_admin.class.php on line 1467

Today, I struggled with a collage that comes from a painting vom Artemisia. The more I changed it, the less I felt comfortable with it. The initial idea was to do something with the berries and the leaves, a kind of celebration of the renewal in nature, a sort of antique goddess. In the middle of it, I got stuck. Here's the state of the collage:

My thoughts were going to Bernini's Danaë, to Arcimboldo etc., but I felt that the relationship of foreground and the head wasn't satisfying because the head seemed unrelated to the body. That's why I decided to "destroy" it:

This time I felt that I got it right: I liked the contrapposto between the arms and the turn of the head, the upgrowing branch and the joke with the blueberries. I missed just a little detail in order to "close" the picture at the top and I was done. Here's the final picture:

for a bigger picture, please click here.

So, what happened? Again, I had to "sacrifice" an important part of the picture in order to get it right. And this decision took me only a few minutes. And the final gesture came just about 10 minutes later. I prefer this to getting stuck in my picture and tearing it up at the end.

And what does the picture tell me? In fact it looks quite scattered to me. And yet, it works - at least in my eyes. It's like different sensations, remembrances, thoughts that happen all at a time at the scent of twigs, leaves and berries.
Spring is back again, one more time (I'm getting older and older) but the magic works again. A I read in Jean Améry: being old, there's not much future anymore. Better live the present moment as best as I can.