Still, I felt a need to get back to your comment about my artwork needing to be broken free from the constraining borders I put them in. So, I am posting a couple to float freely within your background photo and a couple with a tiny white border like the one you give your artwork.
First, totally free of any constraints:
Next, slightly contained with a tiny white border:
Now a little explanation of how I decide what parts of a larger painting to select for these special small artworks (I wrote the following in an email to my sister who asked the same question; so, I am cutting and pasting my reply here):
A long time ago (2-5 years back) I was looking at my large paper paintings through a camera lens and "found" so many areas of wonderful colors and designs. I "wanted" them; but, I couldn't find exactly the same place when I went into the large paper to "cut them out." They were very precious; and, a lot of trouble to deal with. I started tearing the paper randomly for the waxed paper assemblages I used to make and discovered that it stopped me from getting caught up in the "precious" thinking. I found lots of small pieces that I loved and never did see in the whole piece and lots of them that I didn't like at all but they often looked great when added to an assemblage that covered up parts of it. It opened up a whole new world to let go of the preciousness of my artwork.
From that waxed-paper assemblage period, I moved to tearing and cutting up (with an Exacto knife and ruler) large un-waxed paper paintings (often paintings that I hated) by turning the paper over so I can't see the artwork. I flipped over the small pieces (and sometimes they were very, very small - 1" x 1") and - surprise! - there were all kinds of wonderful small paintings in front of me. Lately, the tearing often goes like this: I fold the paper in half, take each half piece and tear it in half and keep doing that until I get a size I like or want. Lately, I've been painting BOTH sides of the paper and I have two sides to choose from. I might work in a color theme so I can put the pieces together in new, but complimentary ways. I select the pieces I like best or some that look passable. Some of them get pasted on a larger sheet of paper as finished artwork in its own right (like the ones above). Others are pasted into a collage. Some are used to scale up into large paintings (usually with dismal results). Still others are torn even smaller to adorn a journal page or another mixed media painting. And, others sit in a box waiting to be chosen or, at least, taken out to test in one setting or another - like your manikin muses, Helga.
You can guess that I have thousands of these little pieces of my art lying around. Maybe they really are my muses. They certainly inspire me; though I find I cannot replicate the design and colors in larger paintings like I wish I could. The large-paper approached, with no expectations of producing a perfect painting, end up so much freer, expressive, and looser than I can produce on panels, canvas, and other things I cannot tear apart. I tighten up, agonize, and fail. Is it a flaw in my artistic skills? Am I cheating? I try not to go down the road of answering these questions because I'm really loving the tearing-up-ugly (and beautiful)-paper-paintings process.
I hope this post answers your questions about my process and why I might put paintings into constraining borders.
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