Studio Thoughts

I'm producing oil and acrylic paintings from this new collection of photos with more subtle editing. Have also printed them all off in wallet size = I plan to enlarge them and apply 'trial and error' method again on the photocopier. Have kept the latest copy of the college's 'Stylist' magazine to work with later - had a quick thought of the glamour images relating to John Stezaker's work; perhaps I can use images from this magazine to create more collages that are not just centering around memory, and see if I can still apply my notion of white fragments. I feel it will be a lot easier cutting out the figures from printed photos to depict absence and presence; more than trying to show it with paintings. This is what I have been wondering = why can John Stezaker cause his photographic collages to look obviously finished, despite the missing parts of the image; and I can't seem to do it with paint? After a conversation I had the other day, I am trying to make the 'whiteness' much more prominent by not painting any part of the figure placing it in the image as a more solid/defined shape. People seem to look at technical and graphical lines as 'finished' (i.e actual shapes) which is how Stezaker creates his 'Tabula Rasa' collages - the cut out part of each image is rectangular and the lines are very defined. So perhaps it is the outlines and the uncertain definitions that make my white spaces 'unfinished' and ambiguous. And paint seems to play a part in this notion of uncertainty as well. But the problem I'm having is that I like the fact my work (and these pieces) are uncertain and ambiguous! It fits in with the context of memory and indication. I think what I need to make prominent and obvious is the ambiguity = define the undefined (?)