Monday 13 April 2015

Colour, Colour, Colour

Life has been busy - working with many textile projects that were interupted with a spate of colds, coughs and illness in the family.  I was sorry to have to miss the recent opening of Quilt Art's Dialogue exhibition in Heidelberg at the end of March and could not attend, due to illness.
My piece for the exhibition is called Reality and Rhetoric and is 2.7m wide.  The slats of transfered image hide the dialogue that reflects the history and economic life on the Somerset Levels, especially after the flooding of last year.
Back to my roots

When we moved to Somerton, we joined the Bruton Art Society which is a skilled group of painters who love all aspects of fine art, andwe can attend lectures, outdoor painting sessions and workshops. I recently did a workshop with Annette Burkitt an artist from Frome and we looked at Abstraction and Colour in the Landscape with reference to Gaugin and Kandinsky.

Well...
Getting a brush in my hand (except for painting paper and cloth for collage in stitched textiles) was wonderful to revisit.  Especially using Gouache which I used for illustration when I worked in publishing, years ago.  I had forgotten what a great medium it was.  Vibrant yet forgiving.

The first day we took the painting by Gaugin called the Talisman and looked at colour and shape.  This is not exactly like the original but I love how 'freeing' it was to just look at an artist's work for inspiration.

I have used this practise myself in textile teaching and really loved the experience of just giving myself over to another work of art.

Then, later we took our own inspiration and developed two paintings, again looking at the vibrance of colour, shapes and marks on the surface

A winter lane near Ilminster
Hills north of Somerton
Now I surprised myself at how colourful these paintings were. Not my usual pallett.
I am loving revisiting 'art' again and really want to do more painting - work, just for me.  None of these will necessarily find their way into stitched textiles, but I am keen to explore so much more 'art' practice and really having fun. 

So watch this space.... I'm busy filling sketchbooks now with new directions and will post more pictures soon.

Thanks for reading 

No comments:

Post a Comment