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

the slow go

all things creative are at a bit of a standstill these days

I'm back in Calgary, helping out with the wee ones so there is almost no time at all for anything else

it's not a hardship!

I did work on a bit of collage the other day, using some of my painted papers

torn strips, alternating dark and light, angling things

thinking layers...

ice forms in layers and at the Little Lake that's always a messy affair due to the big fluctuations in temperatures during the winter months

freeze, thaw, freeze and on it goes

I'm pleased with this torn-edge version though my initial plan was sharp-cut edges

they ended up looking awful but when the 3 year old wanted to demonstrate his cutting prowess I gave him a less-than-perfect painting and his safety scissors and let him have at it

the results of that cutting spree are safely tucked away for me to play with next week when I'm back at home - I figure he might just have a knack for this

so the next thing for this is to cut it from the background

today I snatched a few minutes and started sketching branches from my photos

I want to play with some of the common branch patterns I keep seeing, turning and layering them to create some interesting repeats and then add them here

this is me, truly working within "pockets of time"!

slowly...

moving forward, though rather slowly

I've finally decided on a rectangular concertina book for the ice/branches studies, but one with a horizontal orientation

the pages are folded and embossed, viewing window prepared (for selecting crops from painted and printed papers), a selection of crops are cut and ready to be glued in place and now I'm working on bringing fabric and thread into the picture

I've also been painting ice, trying a number of different paint colours and tools, slowly and steadily getting closer to something that connects with what I saw and felt that day

in thinking about the branches and possible methods for constructing them, I sampled some fme stitching on English scrim with the horizontal threads removed and stitching "branches" with the verticals

the white stitching is complete and to judge the effect, I've laid it on top of one of the painted backgrounds with the view-finder cut-out placed on top... getting a sense now of the composition

I still need to bring in some of the soft greys and darker browns but am thinking of doing that with straight stitches as I attach the fme

I'm also working on embroidered branches that can be cut out and applied... I've a feeling there are so many options - those are just the first two that have come to mind

the next trial  iswith  tissue paper collage made with leaves and scrim embedded in it

this is from an old sample that I have now torn apart and stitched together, changing the orientation of the stitching lines - shows promise but I need to paint it as the colours are wrong

it does seem more abstract though, and that's the point of this work

to take something I see and make something inspired by it but not in a perfectly representational way

and now on my daily walks I am noticing fallen branches and twigs on the sidewalk

it's the same thing but different

(I love statements like that - not correct but everyone knows exactly what you mean)

I've been photographing a few of them, picking them up and taking them home to sketch

more often than not I see letter forms, just as I did with the branches at the lake, and I am slowly gathering an alphabet, creating a font of sorts

I'm not sure if they'll play into any of my current work but it's one more thing on the creative journey that is giving me a fair amount of pleasure at the moment