fiddle faddle

for me summer is not a time for studied explorations, heavy thinking, serious reads... it's a time to lighten things up and embrace the transience of the season

a bit of fiddle-fiddling around with no serious intentions

letting things flow freely, as does the water in the mountain streams all around us, filling the lake, and flowing out again

always coming and going

lately I have found it easier to work in paper, paint and ink - it's certainly quicker which allows for a less considered approach than when I work solely in stitch

there's something about it that encourages me to just get going, gluing and painting in quick succession, and though I haven't yet figured out why that is, I am enjoying it very much

likely the impulsivity of the inner child at work

I do like a slightly more considered approach with stitching - probably because it takes so long I hate to get it wrong

a week ago I started experimenting with doing both; one day a paper-based version of whatever comes to mind and the following day I interpret some aspect of that work in stitch

below is a collage I made using gelli=plate printed papers, a scrap of tissue paper previously collaged with a bit of lace, and a piece of paper I had dome some random lettering on

the next day I gathered up all my lace scraps and tacked them on to a piece of vintage linen

I'm debating adding some embroidery in off-white, something simple - right now I'm leaning toward either  straight lines extending from the lace to the outer edges in the upper right area only

or

detached fly stitch scattered in the other area

your thoughts?

in the next set (which was actually the first one I did) the collage is a bit of a mess but I do like the stitched piece that came of it... it was enjoyable to stitch, varying the number of threads in the needle and randomly couching the branches as I went

very freeing

yesterday it was back to collage, this one a mountain scene

 the foreground paper is one I bought and represents water...  the others are, from the bottom up, the lighter green "grassy" section was stamped with a stamp I carved, the mountains were cut from a larger piece of paper where I had dripped on random blobs of paint and ink and then pushed it around with a painting scraping tool and the sky portion is cut from a gelli-print

I love making scenic collages using random papers I have painted - I don't have to try and paint a mountain, I just look at piece of paper and see what I see in it and work with that - the results are always unexpected and something I could not have done if I tried

no idea how long I'll keep at this - daily practices are hard to sustain, but they have such a huge value I do find them worthwhile

regardless of how long it lasts I think it a good exercise to draw on when need arises

and a very nice thing to fiddle around with on a hot day

Layers

been a busy few weeks here in these parts...

lots of "doings" as my Grandmother would have said

I've been mucking around with trying to abstract something and it hasn't been going very well so yesterday I had a think about why not and decided layers was the answer

 I've been using a previous piece of work as an inspiration/starting point - it's handmade textured paper embedded with rose petals and ferns to which I added scraps of lace and fabric followed by machine embroidery on top... trails of tiny circular stitches meandering here and there, catching the edges of the lace and fabric, holding them in place,  adding texture to the whole

I began my first few samples with a piece of muslin and then added scraps of paper and fabric to create a base followed by bits of lace added here and there

I didn't like them much - too contrived I think

I tried added some random stitches, creating and then breaking up patterns but that wasn't working either

yesterday I got fed up with trying to force things so after a bit of finger drumming I realized what I wanted was layers... glimpses of lace and cloth here and there, with scraps of paper... hints of things caught in layers

I gathered up a pile of lace and cloth scraps and then rooted through a box of paper and started tearing strips and chunks... some plant-based glue, a soft brush and several sticky fingers later I had collaged/assembled/layered half a dozen small surfaces that once dried would give me a new playing field

this morning they were finally dry

all in a stack... layers yes, and edges too...

tissue paper, scrim, broadcloth, silk, lace, handmade paper

it was a sticky, messy job layering all of those bits and pieces but the results are what I wanted and now comes the stitching

I love how the lace shows through the tissue paper on this - softened but still very visible

and on this one a few hints of blue

seems layers are all around right now... I went to Margaret Falls   a few days ago... a beautiful canyon across the lake,  a waterfall at the end of the short hike in... 

to give you a sense of scale... here's an image where my son's girlfriend climbed along one of the leaning trees

as I walked the trail I noticed the sides of the canyon were composed of thin layers of rock that crumbled easily... some golden brown, others almost black

I emptied a zippered pocket in my bag and filled it with a variety of small rocks found on the edge of the path

it's my intention to grind these up and make watercolour paint with them...

and then I can paint the rocks

with the rocks themselves!

inspiration

long, long days... light until well after midnight and even then dusky is as dark as it gets

with record snowfall the past two winters and more rain than usual, the Yukon is as green as green can be

my friend's property typically has a forest floor of brown earth, decayed leaves and pine needles but not this year... this year it's a carpet of green dotted with periwinkle-coloured lupins

they've always grown here but not in such a vast array as you see this year

a few days at Marsh lake, taking in the sights and sounds of the sandy beach, the water and most of all the trees

Yukon trees, by and large, are skinny and misshapen and the lake area did not disappoint

a drive to Carcross is never complete without a stop-off at the Emerald lake lookout

and the other day I found that here in the Yukon we have our very own Bluebell Wood!

I first walked through without my camera,  frustrated that I hadn't brought it, then grateful

rather than focusing on the perfect angle, I looked at the whole of it, taking in the wonder of it

back again today but only briefly so I captured a few quick photos... tomorrow I hope to go back and go deeper into the forest and try to capture a little of the beauty I saw there - a rough tangle of undergrowth punctuated here and there with little clumps of bluebells, here, there and everywhere

I've done a few on location sketches and picked flowers for pressing... tomorrow I am staying put and working on more sketches and some watercolour painting

I'm interested in capturing local colour, the vast array of greens along with the colours of the wildflowers that pop up in ever greater numbers each day

time to take my inspiration to paper

always thinking...

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

"Picture My World"

inspiration image with fabric colour study

using a cropped photo of fallen branches trapped in the ice along the shoreline of a local lake I first created a colour study in fabric... stitched "branches" held it all together

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...

next...

next Saturday I'll be winging my way north... off to the Yukon

 17 days of blissful contentment

when I step off that plane, out of the air terminal, the earth will gently reach up and wrap itself around my ankles and for the first time in three years I will feel anchored, at one with where I am

only in the Yorkshire moors, near Haworth, have I come close to this feeling

the last time I was in Whitehorse I stayed in a downtown condo with my daughter and grandson... quiet baby-days and each morning there was time for me to do a simple colour study... I chose a different subject for it each day and then painted what I saw; green, grey, brown, blue and finally "flowers"

it was very meditative and looking back on them now I am instantly transported to that place, that view, those thoughts

looking and recording in some manner will do that and I want that again but in a bigger way so I'm planning a  daily sketchbook practice whilst there

the trouble is, so much else will be going on and I am still rather new to working in sketchbooks so in order to streamline the whole affair I am practicing now: one hour each day with a different component to tackle during each session

yesterday was scenery and writing - nothing much for my first session other than that... a view and a record of it

I'm using photographs from previous visits - practice for working in a sketchbook on location makes even more sense when working with images of the landscape I am going to be seeing

up in the mountains of the Wheaton River Valley, first stop "Tally Ho"

a typical Yukon gravel road lined with fireweed, mountains all around and scrubby dark green trees dotting the alpine landscape

I had the idea to gesso drawing paper which I can get in large sheets at the art supply store but it did not take well to watercolour so this first painting was a real struggle

at least I know now not to bother with anything other than watercolour paper

today I thought I would work on mixing the colours of the Yukon, namely the dark trees and flowing water

this time, down on the valley floor, the Wheaton River itself

beginning with the trees, Alizarin Crimson mixed with Winsor Green (yellow shade) gave me the beautiful dark green of the spruce trees... a touch more on the crimson side and it throws brown - I learned that today and it's a good thing to know

next was the water... it changes from pale blue-green to deep green-blue to slate in a heartbeat, influenced by sun, shade and wind

Winsor Blue and Raw Umber

and if I lay down a light wash of the Umber first and then glaze that with the mix it's almost perfect

playing with layering the greens, sunlight and shadow and all that... lots more to learn and refine

and because I'm fascinated with abstraction these days, tomorrow's plan is to take a view and capture the essence of it followed by a thumbnail study of various aspects of it, stretching the reality of the view into abstract impressions

nothing like a good challenge to make things interesting!

groundwork

 odd how once you start thinking seriously on a subject it begins to invade your thoughts and actions on multiple levels

"simplicity" is pretty much all I think about right now

 and all I want really, especially in the studio

although it's chockablock full of supplies, it's also home to more than a few "decorative" pieces and the clutter has been bothering me a lot lately

Thursday I began pulling all of that out there and things began to improve visually almost immediately and I rediscovered the beauty of space

one area that had been nagging at me for a while was a printer's tray I had re-purposed as a bulletin board of sorts

it was full of layers of photos, postcards, greeting cards, trinkets, bookmarks

 things on things on things

visual clutter of the worst kind

I spent ten minutes stripping it clean and then had a think about what to put back when I realized I wanted that board to be full of things to inspire me - visual reminders of what I like to work with 

favourite fabrics, colours, inspiring work by others... things that make me want to make

slowly I have been rooting them out - not done yet but the "bones" are there and I'm pleased

below is a postcard of Helen Terry's work along with some fabric and paper scraps I like, and a quote by Goethe

"things which matter most must never be at the mercy of those that matter least"

a couple of photos I took along with a floral image I printed from Pinterest, original source not provided

I'm keen to do some work with pressed flowers I've collected so have attached a couple to fabric collage

also a thread wrap, scrap of painted paper, ink-printed linen, a torn ink drawing from a few years ago and a few other random bits and pieces

below right - another unsourced Pinterest image with another Helen Terry postcard below and more fabric scraps

I haven't any words on here yet other than the quote but they are next 

as well as a drawing or two I think 

I'm not in a rush to finish and know that over time things will come down and others take their place as my interests change and work develops 

for now it's a starting point, a laying of the groundwork... a visual reminder of what I like and what I'd like to work with

and just in doing this I have already discovered something exciting - the fabric swatches joined together in this haphazard manner are exciting to me and tomorrow I'll be snipping and pinning away...

seeking simplicity

home again... figuring out how to pick up where I left off

it takes time to become familiar with things in the studio... questions tumbling through my head, one after the other, trying to sort out what I was trying to achieve

stepping away from this work for two weeks turned out to be a very good thing

it's given me time and space to think, to consider what I'm trying to achieve, why I seem to struggle with my work more often than not

I have an idea, begin to work on it, am delighted (usually) with the early stages and then hit a great big thick brick wall, stymied as to what comes next

last week while pondering that yet again, I asked myself why I'm so sure there is something that comes next

I was following along with a free  one week painting course and an oft asked question was "How do you know when your painting is finished?"

easy, I thought... it's finished when you can't think of anything else you can add that will make it better and there is nothing that you want to take away or fix

as that thought flashed through my mind I wondered if the same reasoning could be applied to my other work

is the reason I draw a blank and don't what to do next because it's actually done?

I rejected the idea out of hand - the work would be too simple then, far too understated

again, I questioned that

yesterday, in search of writing paper, I opened a drawer in the studio and found a note I had written a while ago

"seeking the simple"

hmmm...

 a little research seemed in order and so I searched "simplicity" on google and found some interesting quotes

"The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak."

-Hans Hofmann

"Simplicity is a choice, a discrimination, a crystallization. It's object is purity."

- Le Corbusier

"Simple can be harder than complex."

- Steve Jobs

so for now, simplicity it is

there is a feeling of relief in that acceptance, a settling of sorts

I'm still working with ice and snow and frozen branches

now "doing" more than "thinking"

picking up the brush, scissors and/or needle and seeing what comes of it