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

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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