Experimenting with stitch and colour this week, I've stitched on a length of hedge using two groups of colours.
In all this, I was working to maintain sparseness and restraint of stitch - I battle all the time not to overstitch.
There was a lot going on in these small pieces.
Various things were going through my mind as I stitched. In this naturally-themed piece, should I use colour to mimic or reflect nature. Or perhaps I should use a range of colours I liked, maybe to suggest ideas and thoughts, to reflect the seasons or to create imagery. Then there was also the problem of drawing the eye, giving focus and depth, and enhancing perspective.
I was also working to develop and suggest randomness, allowing stitches to grow organically as in nature while at the same time maintaining balance and cohesion. these two, randomness and balance always present me with a difficult tension, since being deliberately random is almost impossible, a contradiction in terms. It is a quality that happens without conscious thought, yet I’m using thought to create it.
In all this, I was working to maintain sparseness and restraint of stitch - I battle all the time not to overstitch.
There was a lot going on in these small pieces.
I'm liking this! The "casual" viewer would never suspect so much thought was going on to arrive at these points, but boy, I so relate, especially with the difficulty of attaining randomness and balance. AND not overworking. I WOULD like this as you are working with a favorite color palette of mine, adding what feels like fall colors to me (although they're really not) to your sepia prints. I just like that surprising splash of color.
ReplyDeleteThank you, Sheila. I find the thinking that goes into work the most interesting thing - the questions and the what ifs? Much of the stitch I do is very repetitive and. leaves much time for thought. Without it, I would hit boredom very quickly and nothing would ever be finished.
DeleteI definitely know what you mean!
DeleteI love this, just the right amount of colour I think, its always difficult to know when to stop.
ReplyDeleteThank you, Debbie. These are not finished as whole pieces (and probably never will be) but are steps along the way to something bigger. As yet, I’m not quite sure what!
Deletetrès beau! à quand le même travail avec les dent-de -lions? :)))
ReplyDeleteC'est drole que vous disiez ça ... j'ai l'intention de le faire, un jour ... peut-être, quand j'ai préparé le tissu!
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