I harvested honesty seeds from our garden - besides having some in a jam jar in my studio area in the conservatory , I also placed some in a wedding present vase in the dining room. It's amazing how varied they look - in different vessels and lighting condition. I wanted to convey both transparency and multiple layers and scales.
The background was assembled from a variety of materials: silks; fabric with an honesty seed print; pieced patchwork in a range of greys. This was overlaid with photos of honesty printed onto organza, machine quilted with metallic thread in ovals.
This was then painted with four ovals of liquitex iridescent medium mixed with Golden acrylic paint (white and yellow ochre) with top layer of pearlescent acrylic ink, with shapes outlined in burnt umber acrylic ink. Trimmed and finished to 12 x 12 inch size for December CQ Journal Quilt
This has a lot of potential for larger scale work. I liked building up the complexity from the background to the foreground, from distance to close-up views. Although a lot of the detail got lost or was covered over , it adds richness to the final piece eg the variety of fabrics soaked up the paint to differing degrees. This piece is very much about the progression of process - one of the most satisfying and exciting in a long time.
really beautiful work Mags.
ReplyDeleteI second that!
ReplyDeleteI love the way these are coming out! These are some of my favorite seeds because of that transparency that you are working on catching.
ReplyDeleteI really like what you are doing with the inspiration you took from the honesty seeds. Also, love seeing the evolution of your work in photos. Thanks for the detail!
ReplyDeleteJust came over from "and then we set it on fire," and want to say two things:
ReplyDeleteInspirational work you are doing! Transparency is such an compelling subject.
Where I grew up, (Washington state), we called that a "money plant." How different that is from "honesty!"