Small Works piece for NCS

This week, works are due for the Small Works Exhibit of the National Collage Society. I love the fact that NCS has both a competitive juried exhibit and a members exhibit (i.e., the Small Works Exhibit). I always look forward to producing something special for the show. And of course, I enjoy small format work in general. Here is my submission for this year's show. It's a piece I've entitled "It was never easy to manipulate my father". Below, you will also see some of the preliminary considerations I had for the background element. You can also see that I painted the edges of this piece. Since all of the works for this exhibit are shown without framing, I always paint the sides of the piece to integrate the edges into the overall composition. I think it looks more complete without cut, white edges.