Print play
I've been playfully stamping my Malay Flower lino block onto fabric grounds; some tie-dyed fabric, screen-printed ombre cotton and hand-painted silk using a gold ink pad I bought in the Xmas sales.
I'm just allowing some creative play at this stage; some prototyping maybe - I'm trying to not think ahead too far but see what comes. I've also added a few hours of stitches to one to bring some of the weaker printing results into focus better.
A new project/chapter
"Creativity is about play and a kind of willingness to go with your intuition. It’s crucial to an artist. If you know where you are going and what you are going to do, why do it?” Frank Gehry
This sums up nicely what I’ve been doing over the last few weeks. There's nothing like a wide open calendar free of outside obligations to prompt some creative play. (I'm calling this my silver-lining having had all my work furloughed or postponed)
Early in 2019 I went to Malaysia with my daughter for a wonderful week full of culture like nothing I’d experienced before so this recent creative playing has been a wonderful chance to pick over the zillions of photos I took, pulling out images, colours and sights that tickle my arty-farty bones! I'm just responding to whatever makes my heart sing and going from there - I'm jumping from sketchbook to computer to lino-cutting to embroidery as I like and it's wonderful fun to just play freely.
This is a little lino block I made after drawing some details from a beautiful silk textile at the National Textile Museum in Kuala Lumpur.
2020
As this blog serves as a kind of diary for me and a reminder of what I was doing and when, it seems only right to record everything momentous - not just my artistic adventures but also sometimes personal stuff that when shared serves to contribute to the world in someway. As I'm happy to share the inconsequential Stuff of Life it's only right to record here the more important, monumental penny-dropping that I've experienced in the last few weeks as the Black Lives Matter issues have risen up to confront my White Fragility head-on.
I don't mind telling you that I feel my age (50- this is not an excuse) I feel lucky to have a 21 year old home to help re-educate my thinking on these matters and to refer to as a compass point as I re-organise years of pre-programmed mindsets. I have been asleep for a long time - I mean I thought I was non-biased but when I look at things in a new light, I'm not. I fall, well intentioned, into many situations that I could have handled much better if I'd been awake. I didn't mean to but I grew older and stopped reading and feeling the energy to be active (I am not excusing this) I now understand that is part of my White Priviledge - to be blissfully unaware and unaffected. I feel woefully unequipped by my school education (in the 1980's) to have a useable, modern framework with which to understand how to think and behave in 2020. But I'm awake again; listening more widely to things than ever before, trying to pummel my 50 year old brain into learning again (it's been a while) and to alter my understanding from the racist rhetoric I was (not intentionally) steeped in as a child of the 80'/90's.
My business is just me, working alone at home mostly. But this is my Anti-Racist policy none-the-less.
Textile work
This will be my final post showing all the work I completed as Artist in Residence at Winterbourne House & Gardens. This post features the Textile work that I've done - not the printed pieces or pattern designs which I've already showed you but the embroidery pieces.
These may have started life as printed textiles which were then embellished with stitch but they have come to life as either hand or machine embroidered works of art.
I had grand plans to do much more; Margaret Nettlefold (one of the original home owners) was very fond of needlework herself and so it was very in keeping to follow this line of response.
However if you've ever done any embroidery yourself, you'll know how time consuming it is. The chair featured here is an old oak chair from WH&G and emulates the chair seat cover that Margaret herself made which is on show in the house.
And so that ends this chapter of work for me. It has challenged and inspired me as an artist.
I can't remember having such a long-standing project before which is a lesson in pace and stamina in itself.
It's been a real treat to have had this opportunity and whilst I could still do it all again and find I haven't enough time, I am also complete and ready to focus on new inspiration to work from.
All the paintings
Winterbourne Hedgerow print
The first print design I made back in Spring 2019 as part of my Residency at Winterbourne HG is also the last I have to show you here.
I had been quietly sketching in the Walled Garden when a mouse felt brave enough to leave one bed, cross the grass and dive into another just to my side.
That mouse made it into the print as did the flowers and birds that I observed around the site at the time.
It's been test printed up in a number of colour-ways by heat-press transfer printing and screen-printed by hand after I'd exposed a screen but ultimately the details are so fine that it's only got digital printing in it's future.
It nearly got birthed as wrapping paper for the shop but in the end the margins for production on it weren't viable - such is the life of a designer; making by hand is the most satisfying and sometimes also the least! But it remains a firm favourite of mine and I hope one day it can show the world it's charm.
