Gallery of past work

Thursday 15 August 2013

Violet, purple, lavender and memories

A gentle colour, violet (or purple) makes me think of my grand-mother, a delightfully gentle and contented lady whom I loved dearly. She was born in 1880 and was traditionally and firmly Victorian in her approach to clothes and most aspects of life. Widowed in her early sixties, she wore purple often when I knew her, along with black and grey. She always used the lovely lavender-smelling 4711 eau de Cologne, a perfume first produced at the beginning of the 20th century but now very much out of fashion.

So purple, violet and lavender are for me colours that are heavy with meaning.

Most of the flowers in my garden are now past and I've been busy with family visitors, preventing quiet forays out with my camera, so I've sought refuge in the archives this time. I seem to have had no problems at all finding photos so perhaps sub-consciously I take lots of photos of violet or purple or lavender.

Here is a sample of my findings ...

Heady thistles photographed in an Essex garden.














A friend's collection of water-worn stones.












A richly patterned and stitched textile photographed in the chapel at Lydiard House near Swindon in Wiltshire.












Wonderful marble facings to the walls of St Mark's Basilica in Venice.

















A  fine filigree of rusting metal seen at a water mill in Northern Italy - a cheat this time as it was colour-adjusted in Photoshop. When I had played with it, it reminded me of the lace my grand mother used to wear so often in the neck of a dress so it seemed right to post it here.
















And last of all, a fortunate trick of the light turned to violet this panel of corrugated iron with its peeling paint.





















And now, because we've reached the end of the rainbow, an extraordinary picture taken on a canal in Burano, Italy, shown here because it includes the whole amazing spectrum of colour in one photo.



















If you're a new visitor to my blog, further details of this colour fun are to be found on Julie's blog and some previous colour posts herehere  or here... explore!

Tuesday 13 August 2013

Contour Mosaic

More playing with contours, holes and thoughts of waterwheels and lines in the landscape, this time cut up to give small squares ...


























and reassembled into a mosaic ...


... for future thought and consideration ...

Saturday 10 August 2013

Cotswold Contours

In between much-enjoyed grand children visits, I've been playing again with the contours and the lines and shapes of the Cotswold Hills as I see them through half-closed eyes. Relating the one to the other seems to be giving much inspiration and fascination right now and to be generating exercises in mark-making with pen and ink and repeated holes in paper. It seems almost outside my control ...

First of all, with a variety of pens, including new italic felt tips ...


... and then holes in cartridge paper using various needles ...


... and pens and holes together ...


... and maximising the contrast and tweaking the colour in Photoshop ...


More play to be had here, I'm sure ...

Tuesday 6 August 2013

Hill weaving

Another weaving sample inspired by the sweep of the Cotswold Hills north of Stroud and their map contour lines.


More work needed on choice of weft yarn and the colour range but I quite like the white on white texture changes ...

Thursday 1 August 2013

A monoprint and Photoshop

I'm playing again with ideas about weaving, the undulating Cotswold Hills, red cloth, contour lines and stitch, and - this time - colour.

I always like to work around pieces and often produce trials, frequently on paper, that eventually seem complete red-herrings, but I never know what's going to happen or what's going to stimulate or influence a final piece. I like to keep my mind open.

So yesterday, I took a monoprint I'd done previously and have been looking at for some time and manipulated it in Adobe Photoshop, cropping, posterising, applying the mosaic function and generally playing with the colour.

Maybe this is one of those diversions, or maybe not - time will tell, I guess.





Meanwhile, here are the results ...

... cropped and flipped through 90ยบ, colour manipulated and mosaic tiles applied to simulate a woven surface ...


... and a version flipped again, cropped further, colour changed and with stitch lines added  ...