Dreaming at the Milliner's

The more materials I acquire that can be used to create collages, the more the process is inviting to me. Here I have worked at enhancing a portrait I completed some months ago. On that day in the Independent Painters group we posed the model with a hat poised on her knee and a mannequin on a nearby table, where we placed another hat. Our usual monitor for the session, Jim Patterson, was not available that day, and we painters were responsible for putting this scenario together, myself among them.  I loved the repetitive echo of the hats, and enjoyed painting that as a theme in the painting, thereby creating a setting for the model, a kind of vignette with props.

Now that time has passed, I'm working with mixed media ideas, and enjoying the playful nature of this kind of work that inspires the imagination, in the same way that adding the hats and mannequin did for me originally. Notice the figure in the background...a real person also visiting the millinary shop, or a figure who has appeared as part of a dream sequence playing out in the mind of the seated figure???