Surprising Myself.

Well... life is full of surprises... I decided to apply for membership in Prism, a well known exhibiting group.  As part of the process, I was required to submit up to six images of work over the past five years.  And that was what was surprising... first, that I'd made as much work as I had. Although given the lack of space in the house, that really should not have been a surprise at all...sigh.  The second, though, was the underlying theme running through my work.  I had always thought that it was 'about' emotions...and, of course, it is.  But it's predominately 'about' landscape...inner and outer.  I thought I would show you the images I have sent to them, to see if you agree with me.

Norfolk Flint.

This is a  manipulated photograph, taken of an old flint wall, and printed onto Lutradur XL.  Instead of stitch, there are places where I have burned away the fabric; the frame has lighting built into it, so that you can choose to light it or not.  I had never seen a flint wall before coming to Norfolk, and took a lot of photographs... the best of them are like paintings featuring different sections of beautiful stone.

Norfolk Landscape.

This piece celebrates the endless skies and fields of Norfolk, broken up, on occasion, by rows of trees... This is a monoprint with additional details painted in, then stitched.

Inner Landscapes IV

Pieced cloth, mainly hand dyes, edged with commercial cloth and sari ribbon.  A thin layer of Lutradur, transfer dyed and hand stitched, partially obscures the piece, but can be moved, a metaphor for depression.  The colours are of the Highlands, while the stitching is reminiscent of the flints of Norfolk.

Reliquary

Another Norfolk/Highland composite; this time, the colours are Norfolk in autumn and winter, while the found objects that decorate it come mainly from the Highlands.

Linescapes I : Rewriting The Landscape

I wrote about this piece a couple of days ago.

Visual Haiku.

Small, hand stitched pieces made to specific rules; I have written about them in several posts, with a summary of the 'rules' here.  In their way, they too seem to be landscapes...

This is the first part of the application process, and I have my fingers crossed.  If I don't get through, though, I have to say that this has been a very useful process to go through.  I had thought that I was quite clear about the way my work was going; this has been a useful refocussing of my attention onto the really important bits.


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Step Back, part two

I've always been interested in meaning, the creation of meaning, and in particular, how the brain interprets marks, whether man made or natural, to try to fit them into some sort of structure of meaning, to reach an understanding of them.  The Texture Of Memory has work in it that relates to that mark making/mark interpreting interest, but there are a number of quilts that fit very nicely into the 'mark making' theme, such as this one.

It's called 'Unrequited', and has three abstract figures in it, the eternal triangle, each looking at a different 'other' with unrequited affection.  At least, that's what's going on in my head, when I look at it.  Some of my stitched photographic work fits into this category too, like this piece ;

It is an image taken of a section of wall in Ely Cathedral...and there are all sorts of things happening in it.  I struggle to reach any kind of true understanding of it, other than that I think that it is beautiful.

Markmaking with fabric, also, as in this piece ;

Lutradur base, with fabric felted into it.  To me, this reads as a landscape, and leads very nicely into the fourth category, that of landscape, or landscape inspired work.  There are a number of landscape pieces, and landscape references pop up in titles all over the place in my work.  Landscape was what drew me to art in the first place (no pun intended...).  I wanted to be able to record what I saw...and then realised that actually, I wanted to record what I felt, about what I saw, and that rarely meant reproducing 'real life'.

The first of the landscape quilts were 'Flying Dreams' (if you search on that title, you'll come across several images and some writing about the work).  This was the first of several, including one in the shape of a flying body, which now lives with Thelma Smith.
I think this has to be one of my personal favourites, it has such a feeling of space and joy in it, at least for me.

While this, Norfolk Landscape, is the most recent, a dye painted and stitched piece.  I want to make more in this vein, it feels 'right' to me, somehow.

Some of hte landscape quilts included quite a bit of mark making; I made a series of them for the Evolon book.  I find myself still playing with that idea in Norfolk Landscape, though it moved from a horizon based image, to a view from the air (in part at least).

Enough eye candy for one day, methinks... more next time.

Taking A Step Back.

Yet another one.  It seems my life is composed of lots of steps backward, followed by a few forwards, and then back again.  Interestingly, this seems to have led to the creation of Rather A Lot Of Work.  I'm going through it now, as you know, partly because I'm working towards a new website. That has meant trawling through the work to see what there is to photograph.  To my surprise, I've found that most of the work is related, even when it didn't feel that way at the time.  There are several main headings for the work I've done over the past fifteen or so years.  Most of it is abstract, or semi abstract, much of it it textile, but the paintings and mixed media also seem to fit fairly well into these categories, also.  A lot of it could sit in more than one category; I'll talk about that as we go along.  I'm still working in all five categories, I've discovered, to my surprise.  If there is an underlying theme, I think it is change, and the creation of meaning within constant change.

It started with work 'about' gardens, all abstract, with incredibly simple structures, but packed with meaning.  There is a complete series, unrecorded, called 'Dawn In The Healer's Garden', which is still ongoing.  Each piece has been made for a friend who was struggling with something at a particular point in their lives.  I continue to make and release these pieces, as a response to what they are going through.  I have no photographs of them, and mention them here for completeness. Here is an image of a small piece in the gardens series; I see from the blog post that it was made for a trade, but I still have it... so it clearly didn't happen...

Most of the garden quilts take a similar format to this, though the Healer's Garden quilts vary enormously.  The garden paintings, though are more like this ;

This is Spring Garden, oil on canvas.  I think that what the series has in common, regardless of medium, is the concept of a riot of colour.  When I think about gardens, I always imagine a gentle breeze through flower beds, making them move and intertwine... a riot of colour.  

Chronologically, the next work to be made is the 'Texture Of Memory' series.  These are almost all quilts, and they are 'about' depression.  This was the first of them, made about sixteen years ago, just after the breakdown from hell, recording the process of burnout which resulted in my illness.  

In a similar vein, this mixed media piece is called 'Losing My Religion', and is also about that time of my life.  

So...that gives you a feeling for the first couple of themes in my work; more tomorrow.