someone once told me I must be always thinking
I thought that an odd observation... don't we all?
over time I realized she what she meant was that I am always considering things, examining my ideas and thoughts and endeavouring to gain as much understanding about whatever has captured my interest as I possibly can
I suppose that's true - kind of that whole "examined life" way of thinking, at least when it comes to my creative work
lately I've made some big strides in figuring out what it is about what I make that is at a discord with what I want
and "discord" is exactly that
there is little if no discord in my work
I do like my work well enough but it does not follow that it is what I wanted it to be
it's the raw essence of things that is missing, and so I am on a quest to sort that out
I think I may have found my very own "missing link"
abstraction
I recently took a Fibre Arts Take Two produced course, "Inspired by Nature" with Tara Axford, with the intention of getting more into creating work inspired by my love of the natural world
what I actually came away with was a deep love for abstract work and all that meant
(the course does not dive deeply into the principles of abstraction - I have done that on my own, first as way of trying to understand it better and then simply because I am so fascinated by it)
it's been a slow burn though, my love for it, and in the meanwhile, I was doing things in the way I usually do
case in point, the pieces I submitted for our Inspired by Nature online exhibition
detail |
concertina detail |
in the course we did a lot of painting and gelli-printing
from the top:
gelli printing with a texture plate I made using branches I gathered from the ice, stitched detail is free-machine embroidery
gelli printing with French knots
gelli printing
fabric and paper collage with acrylic paint and ink
"ice" collage with trees |
painted background papers with scraps of silk and commercial paper emulate the layers and textures of the ice with crinkled silk as a nod to the lines of the branches trapped in the layers
strips cut from the same painted paper as is in the concertina represent limbless trees standing sentinel along the shoreline
the course is over now and the work for the exhibition completed but I am not done with this subject yet
now that I have figured out what's missing in my work (at least in my opinion!) I am going to begin my quest for discord with a further abstraction of some of these ideas
I also want to loosen up a bit in my work and have been having a bit of a play with abstract painting, slathering paint on paper quickly, making a mess and seeing what comes of it
this came first
painted copy paper and now I'm off to the Yukon tomorrow but I plan to keep up with my weekly blog posts so stay tuned... |