rooted in place

"rooted in place"...

an appropriate title for this post though it could equally have been called 

"from here to there and back again"

the comings and goings of the last four weeks have been some of the most pleasant days I have spent in a very long time... uplifting visits with family and friends, a few days away in a favourite city, a lovely drive to the mountains

even sketching one whilst standing in almost-the-middle of the road with a dear friend and partner in crime

now it's back to quiet, and my consolation is time back in the studio

this week I have painted, pasted, stitched, cut, drawn and written my way through a number of delightful forays into creative work

one such adventure was an itch that has been on the list for many months which is now well under way

making textile versions of the pilings along the Yukon River

this week I scratched that itch

layers of cloth coloured with earth pigments

I'm working on four different pilings, the one shown in this post is the smallest, clocking in at just over 5" tall

next up is to add a few straight stitches here and there

I found some of my fabric painted to look like water and laid it behind to get a sense of what that might look like

my favourite was recently done, seen in the first photo of this post and the last: a piece of linen coloured by letting a blue-black ink seep up as far as it would

as with much of what I've done over the last year I'm not quite sure exactly where this is going but I do know it's an important piece of the puzzle and having a few to work with allows me some latitude for experimentation

and as if four wasn't enough there's another idea brewing for pilings of a different nature

thankfully I have another week of studio time before staring down the fence yet again!

Take care,

Jillayne

see feelingly

on the yoga mat this morning, moving into mountain pose...

the idea was to bring your feet together without looking down and the instructor used a phrase that normally passes me by but today something about it made me pause mid-pose

"see feelingly"

this morning the words triggered a memory...

walking by the small lake downtown, early March a few years ago

it was a day or two after a massive wind-storm,  and the weather had put the shore ice into a relentless freeze-thaw cycle 

I noticed tree branches all along the shore, some partially caught in that ice, others fully frozen in place, frost encasing their branches

I was utterly transfixed

what I saw that day inspired all of my creative work for at least the next six months and in many ways it still does today

I realized this morning whilst on the yoga mat I hadn't just been inspired by the visuals alone

I saw those branches, frozen in place, feelingly

the icy grip, the inability to move... to go from waving in the wind to completely immobile

to be entangled

from there my thoughts skittered to a small framed print hanging on the wall in our family room

I stumbled on it in a small antique store over 20 years ago and knew immediately it was going to follow me home

 I've always liked the imagery of boats at full sail... the feeling of heaviness in the drape of the sails, the rough texture of the cloth and that sky, the feeling of being uplifted in clouds

 a feeling of buoyancy 

"In Holland Waters"

by Paul Jean Clays

I hadn't just seen these things, I had felt what I was seeing as well

I love when these sort of connections are made, an understanding that hits me, makes the pieces all fit together in a way I hadn't understood before

I'm not sure I can "see feelingly" at will but I believe now, having made this connection, I'll recognize it when it comes

and allow that to guide what I do next

we'll see

take care,

Jillayne

distractions

a long-overdue tidy up of my worktable last week was on my very long list of things to do

as I surveyed the clutter I thought if I had to clear it all away I might just as well shift the table to face out the larger window and since I was going to do that I might just as well clean the windows and vacuum the curtains whilst I was at it

emptying the bottom shelf to facilitate the move meant reorganizing all of that might as well be a part of the game plan

and so it went on a dull Tuesday morning

a 30 minute job turned into three hours but at the end of it I had to admit it was worth all the effort

you might think that's because everything is nice and neat and once again I am not just reacquainted with many of my art supplies, I also know where they are!

truthfully though, it's not that nice and neat because of my having taken a closer look at a piece of scrap paper I used a couple of weeks ago when I was painting 

 I was so taken with the random brush strokes, blending of pale colours and interesting creases that it took me a minute to recognize it as a paper "drop sheet" 

next to it were a few scraps of a failed photo transfer from a very long time ago... the photo had been one of the clay cliffs and as the transfer didn't work properly I cut the linen into random pieces - one reminded me of a birch tree so I laid it on top of the painted piece

a tree beside the frozen river

another fragment of the same paper was where I had tested a few colours before painting the papers

more ideas for the pilings...

so not a bad morning then

a tidy up and a few more ideas generated

well, not a complete tidy up... these are still sitting on the worktable

I can't seem to bring myself to put them in the sketchbook yet - I want to look at them every time I go into the studio and think about how to develop them further

what paper to work on?

watercolour or acrylic?

charcoal?

supplies are slowly gathering and it seems yet another tidy up is in the offing...

one thing leads to another

three weeks on I have finally finished my sideways branch sample

never part of my plan but the suggestion was a good one and the idea took hold

I'm so glad it did 

the ragged jagged nature of these branches pleases me greatly; stitched in a different colour they could be seen as cracks in ice

I'm drawn to anything with that kind of ambiguity... a thing that could be this or that or with a nudge go off in a completely different direction

another suggestion was to stitch curving lines in silver behind the branches to represent ripples on the surface of the river

I took a piece of silver thread and dropped it on top of the branches, intending to play around with it to see what I might do - instead, I immediately say a way of stitching the swirling current on the river's surface

and as I turned the paper to get a better look at that I noticed how effective the stitched branches were in a vertical orientation

this and that, around and about

the stuff of creativity that spins me round and round

one thing leading to another 

all of it tying together

the current of creativity flowing merrily along

where is it taking you?

on a whim

some might think my fascination with the pilings along the Yukon River borders slightly on obsession

I suppose some might be right but...

 i won't be done with them until I am

and I'm not done yet

the image below, from December of '24 is my most favourite

spaced out, room to breathe

varying heights

beautiful texture and contrast... rough wood

light and dark grey

I could go on and on

late one night, reading a book about art and how inspiration can come at us, I saw a painting of the pilings...

floating in the distance of my thoughts I could see it clearly, as if it was hanging on the wall in the room

low drifts of yellow-tinged white, pale smudgy shadows here and there

the pilings, lightly textured, blocky... varying degrees of transparency, overlapping here and there

straight edges

the river, a slash of shining steel

the next morning on my worktable...

 a jar of mixed ink left over from the dip-dyeing escapade and a scrap of acrylic paper

some charcoal blocks nearby... on a whim, I picked up a brush

a bit of white on the bottom, a swish of pale blue near the top

holding my breath the whole time, not wanting to over-do 

the pilings were a different matter - with each flat spare stroke of the brush the urge to make them more realistic kept pushing through

I switched to charcoal, a tougher medium for me and did some with that - too dark, smudged them back, now too blurry - dratted soft edges!

back to the ink, then a dry brush

wipe it all off, try again

darker than I wanted and too many rough tops but the lack of detail made me smile

I left it for a few days 

the other day I decided to try practicing that slash of colour I was wanting for the river

I found a small stack of discarded paintings and drawings, flipped them over, grabbed a few different brushes and started 

bad, terrible, worse, wrong! yuck, sigh

on it went - different brushes made no difference... all I got were sold rectangles of grey-blue

found rougher paper, thickened the ink, dried my brush

tried again

better

yet thicker ink, an even drier brush and this time I used a low-quality rough, round brush, laid it flat on it's side and drew it quickly across the paper

got it!

a rough-textured uneven mark

before I could forget how I did it I grabbed the painting I had begun and did it again

straight across the whole of it, pilings and all

boom!

just as I had envisioned

well, not quite exactly... as I said, the pilings aren't quite as I had wanted - but now I've done this I can get them less representational, I just have to resist the urge to add detail

I need to keep Anita Lehmann's admonishment in mind - "only three more moves", when the main part of the work is done 

just three

as if the scruffy tops of the pilings wasn't enough I had to go and add the dark cracking snow shelf from the photo below

thinking somehow they needed it to anchor them 

I never thought to take a before and I can't say it looked better then than now but I wish I hadn't rushed to make it a picture

it wasn't meant to be a resolved work - just an example, another way of rendering them, one for the sketchbook

which it is, but one with a caveat

"stop before you think you're done"!

take care,

Jillayne

resisting resistance

twice in my artistic journey I've been overwhelmingly captivated by something I've seen whilst out in nature

something that inspires me so greatly it grabs hold of my creative thinking and refuses to let go

the first, a frigid early spring morning, a few days after a wind storm blew through our town

branches yanked from nearby trees lay strewn over the lakeshore, many frozen in place, caught in the shore ice that melted and re-formed daily as part spring's fickle rhythm

the second time was a phenomenon also caused by wind - the icy windrows that formed on the surface of the shore ice of the Yukon River during an extremely windy snowstorm 

over the years I have worked with both of these events though the windrows along the Yukon River continue to hold my attention two years later

in part because there is so much I want to explore and so many mediums I'd like to do that in

and then there's the growing pile of already begun explorations that need finishing

this week I finally faced the one I began with... it has sat for almost two years now, an overwhelming fear of messing it up holding me back

I was so pleased with the effect of the addition of tiny textural stitches scattered here and there near the main lines that ran from one side of the cloth to the other and though it was going well and with each area completed my delight grew and grew I was still sure eventually I would do something irrevocable that ruin the work entirely

and so it sat

this week I finally got fed up with the silliness of it all, picked it up and finished the rest of the textured stitching over the course of the next two evenings

I want to finish it as a pouch, but as this was meant to be a sample for my sketchbook the fabric is rather small

a strip of ink dipped linen, also from two years ago has been attached to the lower edge and solved the size issue nicely... I have just a few last stitches to add along the edge and I'll be able to bring this to completion

finally

interestingly, the more I turned over the work to secure the thread the more I came to like the stitching on the reverse... it was a constant effort whilst doing the stitching of the ice lines to keep a random, irregular look to them which I never really did achieve

but on the wrong side it looks exactly like what I had wanted

there are one or two more iterations of this in my future, and with at least the first one I'll be working the stitching from back to front 

and both will be made a good deal bigger

now that I'm pushing myself through my ever-present fear of messing things up perhaps I can make some headway in breaking my habit of always working too small

Take care,

Jillayne

serenDIPity

working in the studio for the sheer enjoyment of it often produces intriguing things

after months of purpose-driven work there has been an urge to mix it up a bit - this week a journey back to dipping dampened cloth into ink and watching the magic happen

hand-spun hand-woven linen in the neighbourhood of 115 years old

a mixture of Payne's grey and carbon black ink, diluted 

and a wide mouth canning jar

unrolling the linen later that day was a bit shocking... it had taken the ink in such an amazing way, the coarseness of the thread and the weave directing it to create spiky dark trees along the length of it

Yukon trees

immediately an old family photo came to mind, of my great-uncle's cabin on a lake not far from Whitehorse

water, a banked shoreline and again those spiky northern trees

 this one, taken by a friend a few years ago... the Yukon River on a misty August morning, just at the moment she heard my plane bringing me back to Salmon Arm taking off

art and life... 

wandering in and out of the studio throughout the day, looking, thinking -  pondering this stitch or that thread, a strong desire to add some small places of definition

just enough to enhance, to nudge the imagery here and there

nothing concrete yet but... 

it was a good day