The Fainting Couch Collage

​Katie McCann is a self-taught English artist currently living and working in Berkeley, California. Her work has been shown in the USA and in Europe in group and solo exhibitions. Her work can be seen in the 2019 book 'Collage by Women - 50 Essential Contemporary Artists” published in 2019 by Promopress Editions. "With just a pair of scissors, I create intricate, hand cut collages which reflect my Victorian obsession with faeries, flora and fauna. From my large collection of books, prints and pages that are antique, forgotten and foxed with age, I cut out images, categorize them and then eventually piece them together like a complex paper jigsaw puzzle. My collages are places where beauty is strange, creatures are curious and a sense of wonder prevails. The female face is central to much of my artwork and often acts as a reflection of the natural and sometimes magical world. She can be surrounded by birds, fish and butterflies or submerged in a dense wallpaper pattern which either represents her prison or her liberation. I have recently found that my collages are becoming more orderly and methodical - neatly arranged, strange objects fill the page like rows of paper microscope slides or specimens in a tiny cabinet of curiosity. My need to obsessively cut can sometimes outweigh the composition of the piece, so I am often left with piles of abandoned cuttings - lost bones, moths, fungi, feathers, coral, shells and butterfly wings. Eventually these too will find a place to reside......"