Digital collages capture the beauty of the everyday

Wilmington artist Laura Hand Donahue is showing her digital collages at the Newark Arts Alliance through January 28. The artist’s reception will be held Friday, January 6, from 6-8 p.m.

Donahue says her art grows out of “a love of beauty found in the everyday. From the magic of my life I coax images that are fertile enough to explore. If the work is to have resonance, it must have something more than beauty; it must contain the unusual, something like the Mona Lisa’s smile that makes it not only beautiful but unique as well.”

Her process involves choosing an image and then building a sampling library for it. “The digital samples for each image are collected over time,” the artist explains. “Some are from images specific to the subject of the artwork, and others are things I have fallen in love with for some reason. The relationship between the subject and these images is part of the magic; to tell something more with the picture than the original moment had to say.

“The digital collages I make today began with my experiences in watercolor painting and the overlapping of transparent color. When the transparent colors overlap, they create a new color that is somehow richer and more intriguing. The same thing happens with pattern and texture; the interaction of one pattern with another, sometimes in discord, creates something more interesting than just pattern.

“Along with color, pattern, and texture, there should be areas of smooth space and areas of white page, as if the image should be brought up fully from the blank page to the intensely layered image. The work emerges out of these layers, the abstract pieces organized into an intricate pattern that tells a simple story.”

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The NAA’s programs are made possible, in part, by grants from the Delaware Division of the Arts, a state agency dedicated to nurturing and supporting the arts in Delaware, in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts.