Skip to main content

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.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Fabric bowls & electrical cables ...

To add to my seemingly never ending list of works-in-progress, I've started making a fabric bowl.  Or should I call it a fabric basket?  I'm not sure.  Anyway, I've made the odd bowl or two before, like this blue & white one that I keep cotton perle in.   I decided to use upholstery material, which has both advantages & disadvantages.  On the good side, it has a certain stiffness, which helps the bowl stay in shape.  On the irritating side, the kind of material I'm using frays like mad, and I'm forever picking up threads off the carpet.  The bowl's a simple construction, and I've used a circle of cardboard covered with brown felt for the base.   It'll look much better when I've embroidered and stitched into it.  I've made a start on that, and appliqued on a rectangle of plum coloured velvet for extra interest. When not stitching, I've been catching up on my reading.  I finished C J Sansom's 'Dark Fire'.   Real...

Sari scraps, PVA, a couple of books and a necklace

  I'm typing this as snow's falling, and has been steadily all day.  It's not settling to any great extent, though I bet by tomorrow morning the paths will be slippery with ice.  Which always makes me paranoid about falling over and at the very least looking undignified, but at worst breaking a bone or twisting an ankle.  Oh well, it's ideal weather to stay inside and craft, isn't it?  I finally got around to listing packs of sari scraps on Etsy this morning.  I only made up six bundles as I've no clue whether they'll sell or if I've set a reasonable enough price point.  Time will tell.   This is a link to the listing, if you're interested.  This vaguely pink fabric isn't from one of my Etsy packs.  It's from a bit of experimenting I was doing yesterday.  I'd seen a post on Instagram showing how a DIY version of batik could be done without using hot wax.  The Instagrammer used PVA instead, and I wanted to try this out....

Threads of Freedom and charity shop bargains

  It's Saturday afternoon, and I haven't done half the things I'd meant to.  Partly because I spent most of this morning messing about with paints, stencils and the gell plate.  Never mind, everything on today's 'To Do' list will join tomorrow's 'To Do' list ... it's hardly life or death if I don't haul the hoover around the room or pull up weeds in the front garden.   I thought I'd show you what I made on Wednesday.  I'd gone to my monthly StitchArt group, and this time we did something a little different.  There's a project called 'Threads of Freedom' which is working with various community groups across the city.  It's about creating little stitched pieces, some of which will be included in a textile panel to go on display at Leeds art gallery.  There was lots of fabric we could choose from to sew with, and I picked this vintage tray cloth with the roses embroidery.   My own embroidery's not a patch on those flo...