Old Spanish Rainbows, Bruce Rottman
Collage
8” x 11”
“Old Spanish Rainbows consists of two hand-written documents from 18th century Peru, meticulously written in beautiful script. I did some watercolor painting, separating, and playing with vertical and horizontal placement. It’s likely some sort of business transaction record, and my Spanish speaking friends have been unable to translate it. With a bit of color and placement, hopefully it becomes a thing of beauty and a reminder of some (perhaps unfortunate) historical events in South America.”
–Bruce Rottman
About My Art
My art originates with my loves: of history, postage stamps, commerce, coins, relics (I may be a relic myself...), and long-forgotten beauty. I had a 20-year online eBay connection with a retired art professor in Georgia, who somehow had accumulated many hundreds of thousands of bits of paper. I realized a year or so ago I had purchased many dozens of 70-item lots of this ephemera and I had thousands of old bank notes, receipts, ticket stubs, newspapers--you name it.
As a teacher of history and economics and a collector of ephemera, coins, and artifacts, I’ve grown to love hidden beauty. Each bit of old paper tells a story (mostly that we will never understand); none was individually “worth” more than $10, and each was hidden away in my files. My hope is that my art frees each piece of paper from my unseen files and lifts them to the walls for people to admire; well, at least, for me to admire. It’s not unlike Jesus’ love of the last, least, and lost—each of us—and plucking us out of a meaningless life and demonstrating our beautiful God-like image.