cropped words

I spent some quality time in the studio last night. I finished a piece that has been "laying around" for a while from a previous night's sketches (in the spring). This piece is what one might call a "minimalist collage" -- it has only two elements. I know it was partially inspired by one of my favorite collage artists -- John Stezaker. Some of the portions of the train seem to fuse with some of the portions of the woman's body... but, the integration is disrupted in a way, by the stark border created by the straight cut. This is a second piece in which I have included text, but have not added the text myself (i.e., from another source). When I was doing sketches with these elements and experimenting with the cropping, I found that the already-existing text shown here seemed to "work" with the piece. Firstly, it helps to balance the overall composition. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, it provides a "fractured" context for the piece (in a way that mirrors the somewhat fractured partial integration of the two images). A viewer might look to the text for meaning, only to find that the meaning it provides is somewhat ambiguous (perhaps in a number of ways). The piece is entitled "with Alice" (6.5" x 4.5").