Painted calico and abstract art

 

Yesterday was my monthly StitchArt session at the local art gallery, and very enjoyable it was too.  We trooped upstairs to a room I'd not been in before.  (Honestly, the building is like a maze!)  We were concentrating on one particular abstract painting, but there were plenty of others to provide us with inspiration.  The session was all about colour and about applying paint to fabric.  

Firstly, there were some stunning pictures in the gallery.  I particularly liked this 'Off the Irish Coast' by Jack B Yeats.  The colours were much more vivid than can be seen in this photo, with brilliant blues and green in the seawater and soft pinks and pale purples in the sky.  (Apologies for the wonky-ness of my photos.  I was trying to take them without getting in anyone else's way.)

Here's another beauty.  'Silver Estuary' by C R W Nevinson, showing a scene near Rye in East Sussex.  

However, the painting we concentrated on was Sara Barker's 'a child slipping, a man losing his hat, in natural weather'.  I'll admit that I can't see a child, a man or his hat!  But the colours are very appealing.  The picture has different levels, with panels added for a 3D effect, and there's a wire sculpture that is laid over it, which you can see better from this side view.

Back in the art space we experimented with adding watered down acrylic paint to squares of calico, seeing the effects we could get, and making a surface that is kind of like an artist's canvas.  But one that you can stitch into.  I really like the softness you can get and the way colours bleed into one another.  

As our messy squares weren't dry enough to sew on, we used some pre-prepared calico that'd been painted with colours found in Sara Barker's picture.  Rather than the usual embroidery stitches - lazy daisies or running stitch, etc - we experimented with weaving on the calico, using layers of stitching to build up colour. 

As usual, I didn't get my piece finished during the two hour session, so continued with it at home in the evening.  

It's reminiscent of the whole Visible Mending trend.  I made a larger square, then added a rectangle to mimic the different surfaces on Sara Barker's work, and couched silver thread to bring to mind the silver wire she used.

It may not look like anything very much, but with these sessions it's about observing and interpreting and trying things out, rather than coming up with something worthy of its own place on a gallery wall.  I've added this effort to my fabric book, and even made a Stitch Art tag to go with it.  It's definitely a technique I can return to, and spend more time on the weaving to create neater lines and depth of colour.

Hope some of that made sense, and thanks for stopping by.