Mixed Media Collage from found / vintage papers by Bernadette Helmers 

I am fascinated by collage and have used it myself to explore surfaces, textures and sketchbook ideas for projects.  As an art form it has been around for centuries. But with the proliferation and mass availability of printed matter – text and image – it has gained in popularity and entered the arena of mainstream art.

Personally I find it relaxing and enjoyable.  Playing around with random paper ‘fragments’ – cuttings, torn paper or card, lettering or ephemera – allows the conscious mind to rest and the subconscious to take over.   The results can be astonishing – unforeseen and unexpected.

The creative process can be lengthy and often involves moving, replacing or endlessly adjusting the components which constitute the image until a feeling of unity is achieved.  There remain, however, endless opportunities for editing and revisiting a piece.  Arguably this kind of artwork is never really ‘finished’.

There are thousands of collage artists and as many different styles as there are source materials.  My own personal preference in collage tends towards hand-cut, analogue work with a figurative or narrative element; a spare ‘understated’  ‘truth to materials’ aesthetic with an emphasis on texture rather than colour and a sprinkling of nostalgia.

When I joined Instagram’s international creative community back in 2017 one of the first collage artist I discovered was Bernadette Helmers – @paperleftovers who works from a studio at her home in the Netherlands.  I was intrigued by the images of her workspace; her elegant antique table with its tiny chest of drawers and the neatly stored and sorted materials pictured there: vintage papers, old labels, newspapers, sheet music, cards, postcards, sepia photographs, stamped and franked envelopes, antique cards, reels of thread,  historic portraits and other collected ‘treasure’.  It resembled a scene from a period drama – the context and props for a story yet to be told.

Slowly Bernadette began posting images of her work – intricately cut paper crowns, decorative boxes, tiny 3-D pop-up figures from paper and card – small old fashioned narratives from sculpted paper and flea market finds. They were charming and deftly crafted. Over time these objects gave way to different approaches; semi-abstract compositions featuring ‘cut-aways’ and silhouettes, carefully placed and layered ephemera and small boxed assemblages containing found object displays.  All these hinted at time spent researching other artists – John Stezaker, the Cubist experiments of Braque and Picasso, Joseph Cornell, the modernist relief sculptures of Ben Nicholson perhaps – all of whom have used collaged or assembled elements in their work.

I constantly wonder how much we inadvertently reveal about our lives through the things we create and I’m always looking for clues. Most of Bernadette’s collages are musings on the ‘everyday’ – gentle, poetic and sensitive; elements of the domestic, of ‘home’, mixed with revery or daydream; fictional ‘composite’ portraits from faded photographs or magazine pages; ‘armchair’ travels; journeys to foreign cities – real or imagined; memories of gifted flowers or a garden in springtime. These things take centre stage in her imagery, supported by elements of text – an old fashioned price tag, a newspaper ‘banner’ or patterned paper cuttings.

There is a sense of time travel in her work as the poignant and long-discarded material of other people’s lives – handwritten letters, edge-of-the-margin doodles and family photographs – resurface in new and interesting ways.  Many of Bernadette’s ‘cut and paste’ portraits feature eyes that appear to look back as well as forward perhaps, inadvertently, acting as self-portraits.  Her preference for simple display mechanisms – works suspended from metal bull-dog clips against plain backdrops or presented in single ‘looped’ card holders, suit her vision perfectly.  Everything is very carefully considered, and beautifully put together.

Recent pieces mark yet another change in style, a paring back; a move away from the decorative and multilayered to a more minimalist, rectilinear approach: a picture plane composed of monotone ‘building blocks’ – painted or inked paper built up around a central found image juxtaposed with random, calligraphic mark-making on the picture surface. The result of more art historical research perhaps. As always in her work there is a feeling that Bernadette is seeking to perfect that all important sense of ‘balance’ – paying particular attention to positive and negative space, figurative and abstract elements, light and dark tones, textures and mark-making – in order to achieve the creation of a harmonious ‘whole’.

Forever evolving, Bernadette’s mixed media collages reveal an inquisitive mind, an experimental approach, a growing confidence and a serious commitment to artistic and stylistic development.  I continue to ‘follow’ her creative  journey with the greatest of interest.

You can find more examples of Bernadette’s mixed media work on Instagram @paperleftovers and in her Etsy shop.