The Art of Collage: Transforming Everyday Images into Stories

Collage gives me a language, but flowers give me a dialect all my own. Each bloom carries its own story, a symbolism passed down through centuries, and I use them the way a poet uses words…Roses for love and tragedy, forget-me-nots for remembrance, dandelions for resilience, magnolias for grace.

When I layer flowers into my collages, I’m not just decorating, I’m speaking. I’m building a visual vocabulary of femininity, memory, and transformation. Flowers let me say the things I can’t always name out loud. They become stand-ins for emotion, for history, for the parts of myself and my community that deserve to be honored and seen.

Sometimes I think of collage as gardening with paper and memory. 🌿 Each piece is a bed of flowers where fragments, photos, textures, and handwritten words can grow roots together. And just like in nature, there’s beauty in the bloom and in the imperfection of petals that have weathered a storm.

Through this process, I’ve learned that collage isn’t just about what’s pretty, it’s about what’s true. It’s about stitching together contradictions, making space for beauty and brokenness to coexist.

The Storytelling Power of Collage

Every collage I create begins with a story. Sometimes it’s a memory I can’t shake, sometimes it’s a cultural moment I want to respond to, and sometimes it’s just a feeling waiting to be translated. Collage gives me the freedom to hold all of that at once: history, imagination, beauty, and grief layered together until a new truth emerges.

Flowers are central to this storytelling. They act as anchors, guiding the narrative. A single rose placed next to an image of a Black woman might whisper of love, loss, or resilience. Forget-me-nots scattered in the background might point to memory, community, and legacy. A dandelion might be a quiet reminder of strength in the overlooked and ordinary.

What I love about collage is that it honors contradiction. Vulnerability sits next to strength. Beauty leans against decay. Stories overlap, collide, and bloom together in ways that reflect how real life feels messy, layered, but always meaningful.

In that way, collage is more than an art form. It’s a mirror. It shows us how our fragments our histories, our struggles, our small joys can be transformed into something larger than ourselves.

My Process

When I start a collage, I rarely know exactly where it will end. My process is intuitive, part gathering, part listening. I collect images, textures, and materials the way some people collect memories. A photograph, a page from an old magazine, a paint swatch, a pressed flower, all of it has potential to speak.

I lay everything out in front of me like puzzle pieces, waiting to be arranged. I move them around, layer by layer, until something clicks. Sometimes it’s a contrast that draws me in: softness against sharpness, a vibrant bloom against muted tones. Sometimes it’s harmony, the way two fragments feel like they were always meant to belong together.

The flowers always come last, like punctuation. 🌹 They seal the sentence, giving the piece its final tone, whether that’s tender, resilient, tragic, or triumphant.

There’s a lot of trust in this process. Trusting my intuition, trusting the story will reveal itself, trusting that the scraps and fragments can become whole. That’s the magic of collage: it’s never just about what you put together, but what emerges when you let go and allow the pieces to find each other.

For me, collage is more than an art practice, it’s a life practice. It’s proof that fragments can hold beauty, that vulnerability can coexist with strength, and that even the most ordinary image can bloom into something extraordinary when seen with care.

This is the art of collage: transforming everyday images into stories, and reminding us that we are all collages too, layered, complex, and endlessly capable of becoming.

Picking Joy: Why Sunflowers Remind Me of Resilience

This week, I found myself wandering through a field of sunflowers just outside of Cleveland. Their golden heads tilted toward the sun, their stems swaying in the wind it was simple, and yet it felt like medicine.

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about how joy can be a choice, especially in seasons when life feels heavy. Picking sunflowers reminded me of that. Each bloom felt like a small reminder that no matter what storms pass through, we can rise again, turn toward the light, and keep growing.

Sunflowers have always symbolized resilience to me. They don’t shy away from the sun, they seek it. Even on cloudy days, they lean toward where the light will return. There’s something deeply spiritual in that: the act of orienting yourself toward hope even when it’s not yet visible.

As an artist, I see myself in these flowers. Resilient, rooted, reaching for light. My practice has always been about transformation, turning memory, vulnerability, and even pain into something beautiful. Walking through that field, I felt connected not just to nature, but to that part of myself that insists on blooming, no matter what.

So here’s my little reminder, from me to you: joy doesn’t always arrive on its own. Sometimes, you have to go out and pick it. 🌻✨

Artist Asia Armour finds resilience and joy in a Cleveland sunflower field, embracing nature’s beauty, healing, and soft life inspiration

Lore: The Origin of Shame

This month, my work Lore is on view at Norwest Gallery of Art in Detroit as part of the Bare My Soul exhibition. The show itself is about vulnerability, truth, and stripping away the layers we hide behind. For me, that meant returning to one of the earliest stories I was taught as a child growing up in a Christian household: the story of Adam and Eve.

In Lore, I reimagine that ancient narrative through my own lens as a Black woman and an artist exploring vulnerability. At the center of the piece is a great tree, standing tall and radiant, the Tree of Life. Its branches hold bright oranges, ripe with possibility, temptation, and consequence. Eve cradles Adam while a serpent lingers in the scene, waiting for its moment to disrupt everything.

I chose this story because it’s one of the earliest origin points for shame, the moment humanity became “aware” of their nakedness. Nudity became linked with guilt, modesty, and silence. Growing up in the church, I internalized these stories in ways that shaped how I experienced my own body and vulnerability.

By revisiting this narrative through collage, I wanted to strip it down to its core and confront the shame that has trickled through generations. In making Lore, I asked myself: What happens when we bare ourselves fully, without fear? What if vulnerability is not sin, but power?

Lore is both a return and a reimagining. It’s a way of reclaiming a story I was taught to fear, and instead using it as a mirror for my own growth, vulnerability, and healing.

Alchemy of the Artist: When Struggle Sparks Creation

Some of the most luminous works of art have been born in shadows. History shows us that when the world feels heavy, artists turn that weight into wings. Out of grief, beauty emerges. Out of heartbreak, transformation is possible. Could this be… a kind of alchemy?

For me, I’ve found that in the moments when life feels the most uncertain, inspiration has a way of slipping in. When you’re stripped down to the core, the excess peeled away, what’s left is raw truth. And raw truth is where art thrives.

Think about it: the Renaissance rose after plague and darkness. The Harlem Renaissance blossomed from oppression and migration. Even on a personal level, some of my strongest pieces came from sitting with pain, questions, and change. In those moments, art wasn’t just expression, it was survival, a way to transmute struggle into beauty.

Alchemy, in the ancient sense, was about turning lead into gold. For the artist, maybe it’s about turning grief into color, heartbreak into texture, struggle into story. It’s not easy, and it’s not always pretty, but it’s powerful.

So the next time life cracks you open, maybe that’s not the end of the story. Maybe it’s the beginning of your masterpiece.

If this resonated with you, share this post with a friend who needs a reminder that even in struggle, transformation blooms.

✍🏽 Pen to Power: Why Writing It Down Made My Dreams Real

When I first started journaling, it was just to get things off my chest. Nothing fancy. Just a safe place to let the thoughts spill. Then I found The Artist’s Way and was introduced to the practice of “morning pages.” Let’s be real — at first, it felt awkward. Forced. Like I didn’t know what I was supposed to say.

But over time, something shifted. I realized I could use those pages not just to release — but to create. I started writing about the life I wanted. The things I was dreaming of but hadn’t said out loud yet.

I wrote that I wanted to start winning awards for my art… and it happened.
I wrote that I wanted to do more public art projects… and those opportunities started to unfold.

Writing became a doorway. A first step. A kind of gentle agreement with the universe that said, “This is what I’m ready for.”

🖋 Why Writing Works

There’s something sacred about writing things down.
It’s part vision board, part therapy, part spiritual blueprint.

When you write it out, you’re setting an intention. And as the saying goes:
Do nothing without intention.

Writing slows the chaos. It lets your thoughts take shape. And in a world that often asks us to shrink or stay silent, writing gives you back your voice. It gives form to the formless.

💭 Real Things I Wrote Down That Came True

• “I want to win awards for my art.” → Emerging Artist of the Year

• “I want to do more public installations.” → Cleveland Botanical Garden, Fresh Fest mural, and more

• “I want to live a life where creativity leads.” → Now living it.

And these are just the beginnings.

📝 Try It Yourself: How to Start

You don’t need a fancy journal. You don’t need a plan.

Try this:

• Write down a dream as if it already happened: “I am showing my art in Paris.”

• Make a list of what you’re ready to receive.

• Write a note to your future self — the one who already did the thing.

• Or just… start with how you feel and let it guide you.

There’s no wrong way to begin. The key is just to begin.

🔮 Closing Words

So if you’re carrying something heavy… or holding something hopeful… write it.

Not for perfection. Not for proof.

Just to begin.

Writing isn’t magic because it makes things appear overnight,
It’s magic because it reminds you that you’re allowed to name your desires.
That your dreams matter enough to exist on the page.
And sometimes, that’s where they start to breathe.

You can literally script your life.
Don’t like what’s happening? Rewrite the story.
Sit down. Write it OUT.
Then watch what happens.