Estelle Thompson has used collage as a form of drawing to orchestrate form, color, surface, and space. This relatively recent group of fabric collages, collectively entitled Constructed Aberrations (2018-24), expands the size, physicality, and ambition of her previous works. Thompson has made, though rarely exhibited, hundreds of paper collages and papiers découpés as part of her longstanding studio practice. Both these and the fabric collages require complex assemblage and re-assemblage to achieve the desired state of 'correctness' she seeks.

Her parallel oil painting process often requires endless reconfiguring and reworking, and due to drying practicalities, is slow to complete. Her meticulous selection, layering, and subsequent changes make it an incremental, slow process. With the constructed fabric collages, the speed of layout and change allows for shifts in thinking and combinations. Thompson acknowledges this 'risk-taking as infectious' and increasingly projects it into her painting process.

All of the Constructed Aberrations repurpose materials. Cloth is recycled from owned and found items as well as bought new, at auction, or gifted, aligning with her ethical approach to recycling and 'making something beautiful out of the discarded.' The fabrics are sometimes cut or torn, but she also uses 'found' scraps where the autonomy of the shape is celebrated as part of a new absolute.