Angel with a Harp Collage

Postage Stamp Collage
This Angel design is based on a detail from a stained glass window originally produced for Salisbury Cathedral. This picture is created from approximately 3000 used postage stamps and black paint. Facial features and hands playing the harp are painted with artist’s quality fine acrylics. Following on from pencil sketches, to grids on the canvas, the design was sorted into blocks of colour and everyday postage stamps identified to provide background foliage, harp embellished with gold and translucent red wings. Reflective foils and gold leaf were used within the shape of the halo. The original image was designed by Burne-Jones and manufactured in the studios of William Morris in 1902. Though not members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood they were both important to the Pre-Raphaelite movement, often sentimental and usually classical. The strong black outlines of the manufactured lead necessary to secure individual pieces of coloured glass in the original window, lend themselves to the thick outlines of Pop Art.