2017

We move forward from two successful exhibitions in 2016 in Prague and in the USA to the challenge of an exhibition in the Netherlands in the Autumn. We continue to work on A2 sized pieces in portrait format and will be producing four pieces over the year with the theme of 'Freedom'. An essential part of our art is working in series to a common format which does give us all a framework for our creative endeavours.

Tuesday 9 January 2018

Light on the Pool

I interpreted the Freedom theme to be freedom for me to develop an idea from source material that has been brooding  for a while.

I have always admired the photography of  Edward Steichen , a 19th Century Photographer whose work helped transform photography to an art form. I particularly liked his images of  pools  with light playing on the surfaces. We have a small stream in the garden which feeds into a lake next door and I have taken loads of photographs in all types of light through different seasons - so Freedom was an opportunity to take the colours and tones from some of these images I had taken over the years to produce abstract pieces based on the images.

The pieces are all done in silk - I love silk, despite its very unforgiving nature when you stitch it! It has such a luminosity which it retains when dyed and discharged. The pieces were dyed with procion then partly discharged and some pieces over dyed. The first two pieces were done whole cloth, the second two were strip pieced. I used the machine quilting to  try to create some movement on the water surface.



Detail of machine quilting




Autumn Light with copper beech leaves on pool surface



Strong spring light on the pool



Light in winter 1



 Light in winter II


Jean

1 comment:

  1. I love Steichen's photos, too, Jean. Your quilts are so exquisite. The colors are beautiful. I bet these quilts "glow" when seen in person. Nice work!

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