Inspiration

I've always been fascinated with the disintegration of things...be it an old broken down tractor rusting in its field graveyard , a weathered piece of wood textured with layers of paint colors or a ramshackle structure whose story is forever lost but can almost to be heard if one imagines and listens hard enough. I think the mold on this pepper is gorgeous. I want to carve it as a stamp and also paint it as an abstraction. Dust to dust, ashes to ashes - to be reborn, renewed or evolved.

Metamorphous

Last night as I was working on the painted piece in my last post I wasn't liking it and since I had already decided this was going to be a study/experiment/why not? kind of piece I grabbed a paintbrush, the rubbing alcohol and went to work on over all the previous color and stitching. This is what emerged and (other than adding the fewest of tiniest of glass beads) I'm happy with this result. It feels incredibly organic to me.

Organic

Sometimes I think my art work crawled up out of the earth and found its way into my studio. I so much admire bright art that is vibrant and dancing with color. I wouldn't characterize my work as drab but it is definitely organic both in its palette and sensibility. To quote Popeye, "I ams what I ams and that's all I ams".

The first piece is painted cloth with tissue paper matte gelled onto it. It will be enhanced with hand stitching and - probably - other embellishments.

The second piece is cloth made from water soluable stablizer that is being further textured with hand stitching and dyed cheesecloth.

Fertile Veggies

I do have to say that my husband did look at me a bit oddly when I said (as I was snapping away with the camera at this buttercup squash) "This is very organic and sensual". Anyone out there agree with me?

Working in a Series

Rayna Gillman http://www.studio78notes.blogspot.com/ (hope you don't mind, Rayna) has some interesting postings with comments about exploring work within a related series. Serendipitously it happens that I've begun to explore work with 2 different types of series. The first is painting and stitching on sheer fabric. I suppose that could be called a series based on technique although these abstracts I'm painting all have a very organic feeling about them. The other is the series I've begun with representational cairns using my hand dyed fabrics. This cairn series certainly is an exploration of my attraction to these stone structures. As I create these carins I keep looking at them and feeling energized. They actually bring a smile to my face. Obviously something about the idea and the imagery is reaching deep down inside and calling me.