Northwest Profiles: Paper Landscapes With Paper Collage Artist Katherine MacNeill

In the summer of 2022, our production crew made the journey to Oliver, British Columbia, Canada, to meet with paper collage artist Katherine MacNeill. Katherine uses recycled pieces of paper, books and magazines to recreate the landscapes she sees in western Canada. Many times people have thought that Katherine's pieces are paintings until they examine closer. While our crew was recording, Katherine was working on a beaver dam and ended up finishing the piece about a month after our departure.
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Full Transcript:
[Katherine MacNeill] I think the thing
nowadays is that there's so many more
people doing art and a lot of it is good art. And that can be a
little bit daunting too, because if there's
too much out there, how do you feel that
you're doing something special yourself?
[Open music plays]
My name is
Katherine MacNeill and I'm a paper collage artist.
[Music plays]
Since 2015, was when I started, and it was a combination
of recycling, the fact that there were
so many books that were being moved into the dumps. I've been collecting
calendars for years and I started recycling old magazines and then trying
to put it into something else, having it reborn
as something else.
[Music plays]
It's such a good
combination of tactile, color. The way it it reaches out,
it becomes three dimensional. And one of the things
I love about it is that sometimes I can like
something across the room, but when I get
closer, I kind of lose it. I think with mine,
if you like it across the room, you're going to like
it even more.
[Music plays]
I'll get my husband
to take pictures of the composition
that I'm interested in, and then I'll blend those things and use maybe four
or five different pictures to create what
I'm looking for. And I'm never copying. It's always about using
a composition from a photograph that we've taken
and then making it my own. And usually I'm working
from a top down, so it's almost always
finished as I go down and it's about actually
rebuilding from each layer. I'm actually recreating
the depth that I see in the landscape. So, the tree that's on
top of that hillside, the bushes that
are in front of it, the grasses that are
right in front of that. So, everything's built on
top of it and layered and I love the texture of that. Just that's what drives me.
[Music plays]
I love landscapes. It's a First Nations background and it's the connection
to the land, the water. And the one I'm working on
right now is the beaver dam. That that intrigued me. It was the idea that this is
wetland that's being created. This is new habitat for creatures that
are moving into it, and that's our
sustainable environment. That's where the teaching is. And always, I think
our family has been environmentally connected. I feel like I'm
expressing something that's a part of who I am and
that's where it's coming from.
[Music plays]
I've been told over
and over that it's something that nobody else
has seen being done, and I don't think too many people would
be that keen because it's it is a lot of detail
and a lot of time. I can spend six
months easily. This one. This has been a bit too big. It's awkward in size, so
it's a little more difficult to position in
my work area. And it's just been difficult
to find enough material in the colors I'm
looking for at times. And the fact that it's a much
more subtle image as well um, that's harder
to hold onto and make it the way
I want it to look. So, I neglected it
and came back to it and it takes a while to get
engaged again each time. So, I would say this one
has been actually years I've probably been in
the last year and a half, so, it's been difficult. Challenging for sure.
[Music plays]
It's been a labor
of love, absolutely. You can rely on somebody
else to make the good art unless you find something
that just feeds you. And that's what I did. I knew I wanted to do it,
but I had no idea how really energizing
it was going to be and how much satisfaction
I would have in doing it. I found something
that just gave me that creative rush that I love
and that I would
hope others can find and enjoy.

[@autumngrace8541]

Beautiful work Katherine!! Thank you for sharing.

[@MariaLopez-fd4pj]

Cuánto amor al arte se requiere y cuánta paciencia !!!!❤❤

[@vanessarobinson1080]

Wonderful!

[@ksps_pbs]

Glad you think so. Thanks for watching!

[@ofeliamezaleon9010]

Wow !!!