Visual Art
Artist’s Statement
These collages are crafted from personal and found photos that have been printed onto seeded paper. I choose images that unsettle me. Whether intimate scenes of caregiving or vast landscapes of people and wild places under threat, I sense a relatedness in the emotional chords they strike. I take images through a process to release them from their static snapshot forms—replicating them, cutting them into simple shapes, and dispersing them into flowing and expansive patterns. In my final effort to free them, I plant my creations in the ground so that the seeds embedded in the paper might bring about new life.
I practice this in art because the real world tasks of raising children and tending to life for future generations similarly require me to show up through heartache and uncertainty, stay open to constant change, and respond with curiosity and courage. This series invites the viewer to consider all that isn’t made to last, all that must be set free, and all that becomes possible when we willingly accept that there’s simply no turning back.
Rebekah Scotland is an artist, mother, and mental health worker based near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She received a BFA in Art Video at Syracuse University in 2006 and an MS in Community and Trauma Counseling in 2020. She spent a decade working as a community organizer with a focus on social, economic, and environmental justice, and currently provides mental health services to Philadelphia high school students. She makes art in her spare time.