Thank you to all for your kind words about the Flying Dreams piece. To answer the questions...Flying Dreams, the original, is 36" by 16". I always work small; so many ideas, so little time... The second Flying Dreams, I don't have a picture of...I hope Thelma will obligingly take one and send it to me; if she does, I'll share it with you. The third, the first one shown here, is a journal sized quilt, and, like FD 2, a variation of sorts, I suppose. The fourth, though, is back to the original concept. All that green. It's still in progress; I'm trying to decide what to do about the edges (probably nothing. I hate binding, the look and the process, though I might paint...) The photo isn't that good, either; the colours are much more intense in the 'flesh' (as it were). I'll post a better one when it's finished.
Marion asked about the painting/dyeing. The cloth, a polycotton, was originally dyed blue/red/purple with Procion MX. As it is a high cotton content cloth, the dye took reasonably well, but the overall colour was subdued. I then overpainted it with some pinky brown textile ink,with some puff binding in it, and produced...well...a truly horrible cloth! Not one of my better moments. However, when I started to experiment with working with acrylic paint, I hauled it out and over painted it, using a feather as an occasional resist. I just kept mixing and remixing a vibrant yellow with a very vibrant green, hence the variations in the green colour, plus I then added some bits of black and white net, wanting to suggest hillsides, shadow and light.
I seem to go through phases, where I work in a particular colour, intensely. Green was never a favourite, yet now, it's a firm part of both textile and painting lexicons. At present, though, orange and red seem to be dominant, to the point where I ran out of red paint, and had to order some more. Imagine, running out of paint...unheard of in this household!
Thanks again for your comments and questions...keep 'em coming! It's good to talk...
7 comments:
I rememer when you started this series and it reminded me of how long we have been friends and how long we hve shred some dreams if not literallyh then otherwise. Since you re not bound by sacred conventions regrding cloth you are ale tgo produce some truly remarkble work. I know it is estg to see it as if you[e nevver seen it before. Perhaps thatg is why we space out our work on a series. It eolves slowly, but it evolves. I hope gthis makes some sense.
I tghank you for the ddcoments on woring digitally and on my work. I blogged a message today thatg responds to some of the omments,bt it is no big thing. I use the digital to to design textiles in my work rther thn designing the work, I esign tghe arts My current work is making textgiles tht are abot textiles.
Love FD4. But being a green freak, I would be partial to it. It looks to have a ethereal type figure in the middle of it..planned or serendipidous accident?
I prefer the word, spontaneous... I didn't start out intending to make a Flying Dreams piece, I was off on an entirely different line of enquiry. Until I decided the piece needed to be overdyed, and I used yellow...that, of course, produced the green...and off I went. The figure came out of the quilting. And there I was with the fourth flying dreams quilt.
Isn't it amazing how adding another layer can make a big difference? Layers to the rescue!!
What a lot of colour :-) I may have got this wrong but I don't recall seeing so much use of vivid colour in your work.
My dreams are of falling, not flying, and it feels as though I could fall right into the middle of these pieces.
You're right, Linda. A lot of my work has been very dark. The Texture of Memory series certainly was...but it lightened up towards the end. In part, I think it's about depression, but not entirely. Must write more about it...thanks for the comment.
I work small too. Lovely pieces.
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