Abstract Collage with Tamara Grand

This abstract collage workshop is for beginners, curious people, and anyone who wants two hours of making without the pressure of getting it right.

We’ll use torn and cut paper and mark-making tools to build up a large surface — layering freely, covering things up, and changing our minds as we go. Along the way, we’ll talk about contrast: big and small, dark and light, rough and smooth — the simple things that make a composition feel alive.

The best part? At the end, you’ll use a cropping window to find the painting hiding inside your surface. It’s always in there somewhere.

No scenes to compose, nothing to draw, nothing that has to look like anything. Just colour, shape, and texture.

Details:

What to bring: magazines, catalogues, wrapping paper, tissue paper, paper napkins, wallpaper scraps, maps, sheet music — anything printed or patterned. Everything else is provided.

Artist Bio:

Tamara Grand creates layered abstract paintings using acrylic, wax pastel, and graphite. Her work develops through a process of addition and revision, with bold colour, organic form, and gestural marks accumulating and remaining partially visible. Rather than concealing earlier stages, she allows traces of the past to emerge, recording change over time. Her intuitive approach embraces movement, erasure, and reworking on canvas and birch panel. With a background in science, she views each painting as an experiment, inspired by nature’s shifting light, textures, growth, and decay. Her practice began after the loss of her daughter, holding grief and joy together through evolving, unfinished transformation.