honesty

in my creative life there are things to learn, things to understand, and things to accept

at some level or another it seems i've been fighting with these concepts for most of my creative life, especially the latter

there's what is and there's what i want there to be

 disagreeing with that gap when it exists causes me no end of trouble, usually culminating in things being set aside for weeks, months and often years

case in point, these small pieces of antique linen with snippets of fabric and lace attached with tiny, almost invisible stitches

some I'm kind of pleased with, others seem a bit more orderly and contrived than i would prefer, and so they sat for more than a year... what to do?

take them apart and start again?  hack at the pieces so they look more tatty?

i used them as i found them, no trimming, just straight from the scrap box... the thought of hacking into them deliberately seems a bit contrived

and those with ordered layouts - take them off and just plonk them back on any which way? 

close my eyes and do it?

again, that would be even more contrived than just doing what i thought looked nice 

as well,  the neatness of whatever embroidery had been added - it's what comes naturally for me, to stitch neatly... the only way I can make my stitching look "bad" is to either purposefully make it messy or take scissors to it and mess it up that way

(and yes, i have taken scissors to my work to get a random appearance)

in looking at these small pieces the other day, trying to decide what to do with them in my ever-present quest to finish past works, a dawning realisation came over me, that they are very much "me"

not contrived, nor orchestrated... each thing placed where I thought it looked best - to showcase the particular beauty of each scrap... stitches placed just so to enhance a particular quality of the fabric or lace

planned and deliberate, yes, but not in a deceiving way, not to make any of it look like something it wasn't

there's honesty in this work and it's taken me until this exact moment, in the typing of the sentence above, that the final puzzle piece has jogged into place

it's all about honesty

when i fight what i do naturally my work is not be an honest reflection of me and all that i bring to it

that fight takes my work and makes it a lie

and therein lies my struggle these past months, years even

in not accepting what is, i was creating what wasn't and it felt hollow

a shallow reflection a best

and so the way forward has now become a whole lot clearer 

feels like a pretty great way to start a brand new year

the little things

christmas...

the big things in life seem to usually grab all the attention - often for very good reason, but it's the little things that bring us back to who we are

they're what settle us, bringing equilibrium to the see-saw of life

this time of year, when the days are darkest and life draws near, the seeking of warmth of comfort tend to be what's needed most

i don't have all the "To Do"s done but i have spent wonderful days with family and friends in the companionable enjoyment of simple small pleasures

visited with our son in edmonton for a week and during a break from studying, he and i did some watercolour painting - there were a few ideas on pinterest so i tackled the two you see here

quick and simple, seasonal but not overly so

yesterday was a baking day and for the first time in a long while i made butter tarts... my grand-mother's recipe, using currants, not raisins

i miss her most at christmas

the times we lived with them in the big house, excitement filling it from top to bottom, with five adults and four children under 8 years old, it was a houseful and my grandmother loved every second of it... 

then it was parcels that came in the mail after they moved away, loaded with christmas baking - the butter tarts were a favourite of all and they seem to bring me nearer to her than anything - except maybe fudge...

it's time now to take care of those last few things on the list, 

and then to put my feet up, and enjoy the quiet magic of christmas

and to wish you the best of the season

Merry Christmas!

old loves

if there is one thing I have loved since my earliest memories it is old and weathered wood

the yukon territory has a number of old and derelict buildings... cabins, stores and saloons hearkening back to the gold rush days... wherever gold was found buildings followed and in the 1960s, long since abandoned,  they were free to wander in

they fascinated me, even at a very young age... who had lived there, why didn't they now, what music played, the wind in the trees, an echo of distant chatter that whispered through the rooms... 

my hands on the walls, the feeling of raw, time-worn wood a tangible link to then

i'm taking this work slowly, finding my way as i go; the more i do, the more feelings that bubble up to the surface and the more i begin to understand what this place and these things mean to me, the influence they have had in what i like and how i think

still looking at photos, editing, cropping, adjusting colour and contrast - it's really one big paper shuffle on my worktable these days as i work on layering and collage

the image below is a digitally edited crop of a photo of the back of a quonset hut in whitehorse, yukon - down the alley from my grand-parent's house, i walked by it daily for several years as a small child

this photo was taken a a few years ago - it's been cropped and converted to a "silver tone" version of black and white which has enhanced the grain of the wood and highlighted some of the faded areas

the one below is cut from a montage of yukon photos printed on acetate

water, mountains and wood

below, the two have been layered with the acetate on top

i love this...

the way the lower portion of the wood almost appears as water; shining, sparkling light acting as ripples 

 the edges of the boards, a kind of wave action... the last impossibly tiny waves as the lake finally calms

next, a slightly darker version... the light is fading, twilight approaches

and now with the sky cropped and the whole lightened

wood as water less effective here but the sky takes on more luminosity 

the dark blues, sparkle of light, water and wave action, sharp lines in the sky... the effects of the somewhat muddled acetate print layered on the weathered wood

all of these things come together, a kind of "polaroidesque" sum of the parts, that is all that i love about the yukon

 all of my memories, layered in mind over the years and compressed into one enduring image

a picture of love

the making of me

it feels finally, as if the pieces have really started falling in to place...

the things i have wanted to learn have slowly but surely been worked at

bookbinding

calligraphy

making my own inks and paints

painting

and now printing

these have been my big five, long since desired, and though i'm by no stretch a proficient in any, i can usually muddle through to get the results i'm after and sitting here, feeling rather content about it all, i know the next part to master is the part pertaining to me

what i like

what i'm drawn to

the story i want to tell

for many years i've taken a few minutes here and there to think about what all of that might be and made lists in various notebooks

this morning, in looking at one of those lists, it seemed it would be a nice thing to have one place to write all that down in; a record of my preferences,  snippets of favourite fabrics and threads,  and notes about what draws me to them

i see small colour palettes,  in thread, fabric and/or paint... so often as i'm searching through a box of thread i notice one that somehow seemed to escape my notice up until that moment... in minutes i have added darks and lights, colours to enhance, greens for foliage, browns for wood - it's always the same, i play and then it all gets put away... how nice it would be to record it somehow

 a place to keep all the bits and pieces that, when cobbled together, are the making of me

of course it must be a book... it's always about books

a small book to take with whilst travelling... one that is not precious but still something special 

for years a little book sat on my writing table, a bought book with a tooled leather cover and the most beautiful paper inside

in february of 2016, a few scraps of japanese yarn-dyed woven fabrics were being shuffled around my worktable for the umpteenth dozen time when it occurred to me they could be stitched together in boro fashion and make an interesting piece of cloth 

i stitched the fabrics onto a page, made a note but then thought if it was such a good idea why not start right away?

and so i did

nothing else has been added to this book since that day which makes it the perfect choice 

next was to gather up some of the lists scattered here and there from the times i was thinking my way through what i like and what i don't

as these lists already have good homes they'll stay where they are but the enduring bits will be recorded in the new book and then continued in there

the lists above and below were written years apart and yet the essence is the same

this next page was an interesting one to do

can't remember exactly when it was done but i had decided i wanted a list of what mattered to me in my making from a thinking perspective rather than from a descriptive one

 this book is not meant to be a sketchbook in any way, not a how-to or a reference of ideas - rather, it will be a book of ideals

"a principle to be aimed at"

a place to jot things down as they are observed, to add a snippet of fabric to that has become a constant in my work, to capture that colour combination that is intriguing me though there is no plan as to what to do with it

this isn't a project, not a thing to spend days or weeks working on, just one place to keep the bits and pieces that reflect the "me" part of my work

hence the title

"the "making" of me"

figuring it out

after two weeks away from my latest work, 

 it felt as unfamiliar to me as if I had never worked on it all

shuffling papers on my worktable... printed edited photos, painted papers, drawings - nothing worked, it all seemed rather forced

this morning I had an idea...

flipping through the papers once again, I pulled out the ones I liked best

whether it was the colour, texture, location, item - whatever it was, if I loved it I chose it

gluing each into my sketchbook for a reference, I spent some time reflecting on what I thought as I looked at them, jotting down notes alongside each

\

water, wood, sky

an old building

once that was done I looked at the various lists and found some interesting commonalties

and some things I was surprised by, most notably strong lines and hard edges

I'm usually all about soft and subtle, blurred lines

after that I went back to the papers from the day before... 

still thinking about wood and water - here I used a painted paper, a gelli-print and a print of a shrub on acetate

this next one is a crop from a photo of a northern lake, a piece of painted linen and another acetate print

love this one

it has the look of a landscape, almost as if the waves of the lake photo become mountains in this collage

next is to look at the photos again and think about drawing 

I'm eager to do more prints but first I want to explore drawing 

one thing at a time

a slow go

playing with papers a bit more... i've been fighting a nasty respiratory virus and today is the first in ten days that i felt like getting into the studio and doing anything at all

i've a file folder full of prints on paper, acetate and tissue paper - altered images of water, plants, trees and buildings along with a few painted pieces

today I started cutting them up and playing around with more collage, trying to find my way back in to where i was before

there are three small ones now pasted in my sketchbook and when i was done I realized they all have water and wood... this kind of work is finding out all about what you are drawn to and it seems for me that's water wood

this first one is actually the last one I did and the one that i decided the quickest

paper painted with my homemade indigo and walnut inks, an altered image of winter foliage printed on tissue paper and cropped photo of our local wharf

the next one is a photo of driftwood in water printed on a lightweight vellum, a painted paper and an overlay of a photo of weathered board printed on acetate

and finally, two different altered photos of water overlayed with a different altered photo of weathered wood - this was meant to be printed on clear acetate but i got mixed up and printed it instead on the backing paper - it actually turned out to be rather a nice print and is very transparent so I was rather pleased i messed up

in my readings on twilight, one of the meanings i came upon has captured my interest greatly,

"a time of tranquility and return, when all things scattered by the day return to their rightful places"

I think the intended context of this was a coming home at the end of the day, but if twilight can be a metaphor for a life-stage, then this quote could also apply to that vein of thought...

 perhaps "all things scattered by the day" are the middle years, when we are doing, being other things, becoming... but then in the twilight years we come back to who we truly are, stripped down of all the other titles

in that thinking, by the day, a tree becomes a board, trimmed, straightened, planed, painted... but in twilight all of that has been washed away, bit by bit until the wood is returned to the essence of the tree

cut & paste

scissors and glue stick...

cutting and pasting, layering here and there, looking for connections

the subtle colourations here and there on a piece of painted or printed paper that can be lined up to make it look as if one image truly extended from another... almost like doing a jigsaw puzzle

i do like finding those but i also the connections that are a bit more abrupt - "raw" if you will

this collection of collages has a bit of both i think

doing yet another online workshop but this is one i have waited more than a year for - not a whim, more a very long-burning desire

"visual narratives"

an exploration of print, paint, stitch by sally tyrie, a print artist from the uk

she suggested we begin with reading which i have embraced though i'm doing it alongside some of the exercises and techniques

my book is "the last of light: about twilight"

by peter davidson

i love twilight... always have

some of the photos i'm working with were taken at twilight, most were not, but it's nigh on winter here and i've been busy with a million other things so am working with what i have and will get what i need in the coming days

it's the landscape I'm after, and the light, the last of it - how twilight changes things, smoothing out the colours and textures of the world, and blending them with an artist's touch for the heart to behold

image editing and transfer is about as far as I have got and what follows are a few simple collages made with the detritus of those exercises

"transparent blue, fading into gold" is how john ruskin describes twilight... a simple yet perfect description, with both fading into dim and then finally dark as the light falls

altered images of mountains, plants, shrubs, the wharf, driftwood... drained of colour, cut up, shifted around, ink blots from transfers failed, vellum, paper, silk

obscuring and revealing

it's what twilight does

editing...

lately it's been all about the edit

piles and stacks of painted and printed papers, all different weights and transparencies - so many variations though only one theme

ice

it feels as though i've been working with ice for ages but the fascination has not abated at all - in fact, it seems to expand, again and again

just like the real thing

for the past few weeks i've been working at finishing a concertina book I started last march

above is a print done with acrylic paint and ink on a gelli-plate

next is a painted version - heavy-body acrylic paint for extra texture and ink for colour

below - an experiment done a week ago

another gelli-plate print, acrylic paint and ink again but this time I crumpled the paper before printing, over and over, as if for momigami

smoothed on the plate but no pressure from a baren or brayer, just my hands, and then only lightly

when I removed the paper I left as it was, still wrinkled

when I glued it to the book page the wrinkles pressed out but they had already worked their magic, forcing the paint to dry in a way that created the look of cracked ice 

and this last page, a collage of linen, paper, paint and ink

a ragged frozen shoreline

and this last photo - one taken by a friend in the yukon... mountains up in kluane

stunning as they are, i couldn't resist trying a few edits - some ruthless cropping followed by this filter called "silvertone" which is rapidly becoming a favourite 

i'm embarking on a new course of learning - printmaking, using photos and drawings... editing, cropping, re-arranging, layering etc. etc.

fascinating stuff  

simple things

it's been a week of simple things

sometimes i get caught up in making work full of detail and intricacies, as if that somehow will make things even better, yet more interesting

i am coming to understand that is not always true, in fact - it is almost always exactly the other way around

lately i've been trying to find a way to paint ice but the results usually look more than a little contrived - the other day i got out my gelli plate, rolled a frosty looking array of white, black and blue acrylic paint and ink and dabbed at it with crumpled tin foil

a sheet of whitish vellum placed on top and a quick rub with a bamboo baren and there it was

ice, in all it's cracked and frosty glory

in the same vein, i've been hankering to stitch some wild queen anne's lace flowers

when i was in the yukon this summer i pressed and photographed them to my heart's content... on close examination they are comprised of dozens of tiny florets with small ruffled-looking centres surrounded by heart-shaped petals

impossible to stitch really

instead i made mine with french knots, first stitching tiny random straight stitches in a green-gold colour  over the area where the flower head would be

for some of the knots i mixed a gold thread with the off-white

the combination of the three led to a flower that may not look exactly like the real one but it's a step closer than if i had stitched white french knots only and a whole lot easier than trying to do a realistic rendition

and still on the mountain front... another of my rapid, scraping the paint around the page in a seemingly random way i came up with this

best yet i think

someday, just for fun, i'll try copying this with a brush and see how well i do

working quickly, finding a simpler and direct way of telling the story is finding me in a place of joy and discovery

i think i need to start a "favourites" book and place some of these things in it, mounted on a page nicely... something i can look through when making gets hard again 

and i can remember what can be done in the simplest ways

process...

winter... ice, branches, snow

mostly ice these days

the more i work with this theme the more i realize there is to explore

lately it's ice, specifically cracked ice

last week i sketched a number of patterns of cracked ice - this is the first one to be stitched

a fairly open pattern with an area that oddly enough looks a bit like some of the branches that were trapped in ice

i have a page full of various designs and tonight will get to work stitching a few more of these in a variety of thread colours

there's also been a bit of collage and the one below almost looks like a real scene... the paper I laid it on for photography purposes is khadi paper and through an odd trick of light it looks so much like a painted faint winter sky

then some tissue paper, cloth and lace collage from a while back, painted with some of my own watercolour paint and then pin-pricked and stitched in a pattern reminiscent of wave foam - not wintry at all really though perhaps a storm just before the ice forms???

i'm working away on a couple of pieces for an upcoming member's show at our local arts centre, one is a concertina book that will hang open and the other a wall piece, a collage of sorts - maybe more an "assemblage"... not sure yet exactly so a lot of sampling and stitch/print trials going on just now and some paper-shuffling of the best kind

i think if you click on the images an even larger version will open up and you can see more of the detail... this piece is inspired by winter images collected over the years from the shores of our little lake, in the centre of town... ice, trapped branches, snow, frozen, snow and ice encrusted cattails and tall grasses

another view...

 not all of this work will factor in to the finished piece - some is just there as a nudge, a way to get an internal dialogue going... what might work, what's needed - what is the story?

in addition to the ice patterns i've also sketched some branches and will be stitching those in the coming days and when those are done things will get interesting... big decisions will need to be made, a narrowing the scope will likely be needed, and then how to bring it all together into something that is not just a collection of parts

good times

this has been a good, good week 

i've been putting into practice some of the things i've been reading - understanding the ways of working that can get in the way of moving forward

one thing i used to do that got in the way all the time was having too many choices - I liked nothing better than to pull out all my supplies that might relate to or be useful in whatever I might be working on but I see now that having five different white embroidery threads to choose from made getting a strand of one of them into the eye of the needle almost impossible

now maybe two get selected and if there's no obvious choice I blend them

and so on

the collages are really helping too, and the more i do them the more i enjoy them

the one below began with the two strips of watercolour-painted paper that looked like water, a fragment of another that made me think of wood and an off-cut of embroidered silk... the drawn markings taken from a piece of silvery-grey driftwood

later in the week i was experimenting with painting silk and burning the edges - trials for a piece i'm developing for a member's show at our local gallery

i had read of this process in yvonne porcella's book "colours changing hue", first published in 1995 

she painted silk with acrylic fabric paints, burnt the edges and made beautiful things - the flowers were my favourite - i had always wanted to try it but back then i couldn't find the silk fabric nor the proper paints and eventually i forgot all about it

i was reminded of the technique by an artist on instagram 

https://www.instagram.com/robertawagnertextileartist/?hl=en

she posted a piece she had made using a piece of ink-painted organza with burnt edges that was dipped in beeswax - right away i remembered the painted and burnt silk from yvonne's book and off i went to try my own version

i burnt the edges first, then painted the silk with the woad watercolour i made while back, laying it on parchment paper to dry... i didn't have any beeswax so instead i rubbed it with cold wax medium

loving the watery look of it, i laid it on the collage i had made the day before to see what it would look like - it was perfect so there it stayed

the collage below was today's effort - came together in a minute or two so i was very pleased about that - interestingly enough, after it was finished i turned it this way and that and found i liked it better if i gave it a quarter turn to the left so that's how it went in the book

i think it's the colour combination i love so i'm going to swatch it with paint and play with that 

and then there's embroidery... flowers, of course

queen anne's lace, one of my most favourites

i drew the stems but am free-stitching the flowers

i was thinking of painting some linen backgrounds to stitch more on but then found a piece of heavier weight cotton fabric with a soft, subtle floral print on it... yesterday i got out some of my pressed flowers and laid them on it, playing with composition and angles etc

pattern drawn and threads pulled, all ready for stitching

good, good times