So here’s the thing… these collages are not collages, they are paintings of collages. Yep. This is the exquisite work of Vancouver based painter Fiona Ackerman. Here’s the other thing. Fiona is so prolific, that you really have to pay attention to what she’s doing, otherwise you might miss an absolutely gorgeous series … like this one, titled “Glasslands”:

“[This series] looks at the garden as both a reflection of the natural world, and an artificial construction. According to Foucault’s concept of Heterotopia, a garden is an other place where the true wild is reflected but subversively controlled. It both imitates and contests reality by simultaneously presenting a wild environment and its opposite, an orchestrated performance of nature, a choreography of growth. 

These paintings [26 in total] emerged from a process of exploration beginning with pieces of painted paper cut in shapes of foliage, placed inside a mirror box (hence, glass-land). The resulting three-dimensional mirrored images shatter, amplify and disrupt conventional views of nature rendered on a flat surface, giving rise to lush compositions with depth and unexpected juxtapositions. In this restrained inventory of sources, the artificiality of the parts contrasted with recognizable flashes of leaves, branches, blades of grass. Though painting, reflection becomes invention.”

Cut shapes in a mirror box? Oh my word, that’s another other thing! Love.