Faces of Old

I procrastinated about what my theme would be this year. I am working hard for an exhibition temporarily called France to be shown later this year and I don't want too much time taken away from the  main game but on the other hand, after April most of the work will be done and then there is still another 4 pieces to be done for Voyageart for the rest of the year, so whilst i wanted to do something french initially, it need not necessarily be so for the whole year.  So I decided on faces of old- I am fascinated by how the madonnas and humans have been  portrayed over time ( some of them made an appearance in last years work) and I decided I wanted to continue in that vein, exploring different ways of creating them and exploring different aspects. The piece I made for Feb is  figures form the Western portal of Chartres Cathedral. I have photographed them a number of times and every time I see them again i take yet another photograph.

They look out into the world, three men and one woman, they are said to be royal and a mix of the romanesque and gothic hence the very elongated figures.They stand atop columns which are decorated with  simple shapes one of which I made into a linocut so I could print some fabric. The photo was photoshopped with the fresco filter and then printed onto white fabric painted with Inkaid  which I diluted with water to see what effect it would have on the  resulting print on the fabric. Inkaid does change the hand of the fabric but it is still possible to stitch the resulting print both by hand and machine.I painted the fabric some time ago ( can't find my bottles of Inkaid and would really like to find them!, they disappeared in the moves). So here is the result...