Doing a show always has me trying out different forms of artwork, so as to “wow!” the people who think they know what to expect from me for my art. It’s good to stretch my limits and see what I can create, but it also always feel good to get back to my mainstay art form: the landscape. I have been creating hand pieced landscapes out of my own hand painted and hand dyed fabrics for about 7 years, and it is still a thrill to have one that catches the viewer in an “Oh, wow, would you look at that!” moment.
Painting the skies is undoubtedly the hardest part of the entire process. I can paint maybe 30 or 40 skies, and end up with five or six that are ones I want to work with in a landscape. I paint on wet fabric with very liquid paint, and the paint tends to have a mind of it’s own as it dries. Sometimes that’s great, other times…… Every now and then I get one of those “WOW!!” skies that I can’t wait to work with; many times the sky seems only okay until I actually get it laid out into a landscape.
The sky for “Sunset at Potter’s Marsh” was one of those skies. I came close to relegating it to the scrap bin until something made me try laying the fringed edge of a piece of brown fabric on it, and then it was “Eureka – this is it!” The landscape quickly came together after that, and it was one that drew many people in before it was purchased at a local art fair.
Other skies are so magnificent that they practically stand alone. “Indigo Prairie” is very evocative of the plains as a storm is breaking up, and it is one of my favorite pieces.
October 18, 2007 at 12:43 pm |
Oh, Wow! indeed! What do you do with the non-wow pieces?
October 18, 2007 at 7:38 pm |
The “non-wow” pieces generally end up for sale when I give a talk to local quilt groups, or if I am in the merchants mall for a quilt show. Some of them end up in the trash, but most find homes eventually. I learned long ago that what doesn’t appeal to me can be perfect for someone else.