“She could not rise. But there she lay content. The scent of the bog myrtle and the meadow-sweet was in her nostrils. The rooks’ hoarse laughter was in her ears. ‘I have found my mate,’ she murmured. ‘It is the moor. I am nature’s bride,’ she whispered, giving herself in rapture to the cold embraces of the grass”.

Inspired by Virginia Woolf’s Orlando, I present you with my vision of The Nature’s Bride: a woman with a soft, tranquil face, her fragile human neck gently fusing into strong crag shoulders and a breast of trees.

Here is the back of the postcard that served as the base for my collage. Dated 1964.

In my opinion, these types of collages are the hardest to create — to see how elements of vastly different origins can come together in a harmonious way, without much alteration. You can see another example of this on one of my other postcard-based collages, The Lady Chapel #1, where the structure of the cathedral’s ceiling creates the outline of a woman’s skull.