Life's A Beach.

Well okay, these days, not so much.  But I decided to keep going with the piece from a couple of days ago, which made me think about the beach. A specific beach, in fact, the beach at Cramond.  When I was nine or ten, my mother was lent a flat right on the edge of the River Almond, and we spent the summer there.  My mother worked, so my sister and I were alone most of the week.  It was magical.  Actually, it was probably dangerous, my sister can only have been about six, and I had sole responsibility for her...but nothing untoward happened. 

Cramond is beautiful; I'm pretty sure that my love of beaches and the sea came from that summer.  So...this is a memory piece, and here's the memory :

endless summer

day on day the beach

sand between our toes

And here's the poem added to the piece, and some lutradur lace the colour of sand.

You know I don't like white... and this is just too stark.  Plus, I felt that the words were too dark, too stark a contrast against everything else. So, a little painting seemed to be in order.  First, I stamped some gold spirals into the centre of the 'sun', then dabbed three colours of metallic acrylic paint onto the background, giving this : 

Better?  Umm.  Different.  Possibly a bit cluttered, but it's too late to worry about it now.  And I'm still not happy.  So I stitched the words.  I'd been debating doing that ever since I added them, and finally succumbed.  It didn't take anything like as long as I thought it would, it adds a bit of texture and seems to somehow soften the overall effect of the writing, though the pen is still evident underneath. 

I've avoided writing on work for a very long time.  I started to learn calligraphy because I've been told so many times that my writing is abysmal.  It's a sort of cross between Russian and English handwriting, and not in a good way.  Finally, though, I decided that, like every other mark I make, it is authentic.  It's me.  And I do my best to be legible, on textile work at least.  Perfection is not required.  In fact, perfection is boring.  Hold that thought. 

And here's the finished piece.

The starfish was added for balance, and picks up some of the paler colours in the piece.  Am I happy now?  Meh.  It's not the best piece I've ever done, but I like the poem.  I'll put it away, now, and come back to it, see whether absence works its magic.  Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't.  And if not, I'll throw it out...but I will keep the poem.