A Day in the Studio

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Fine Art, Gees Bend, John Piper, Quilts

This could be a painting but I have been working on putting this image into a half drop repeat.  What a fiddle and quite challenging!

I have been thinking quite a lot recently about the boundaries and challenges of where fine art meets design and vice versa.  This has lead me to explore the textiles and paintings of John Piper.  Here is a link to a particularly interesting design of his put into repeat: http://bit.ly/ZOLMmp This is certainly an artist I will research more in future.

I woke up this morning thinking there must be another way of doing repeats.  This lead me to play around a bit with one of my other designs.  Not only did John Piper’s image influence me, but also the way quilts are put together.  As mentioned earlier, I am a great admirer of the quilts of Gees Bend.  Here is a link to the image google page http://bit.ly/120r0wD  This poor African American community in Alabama, creates amazing powerful art quilts out of their old clothes and fabric remnants.

Here is one of my experiments.  Very rough and ready, but I think there are possiblilties for development.

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Mood Boards

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Autumn Collection, Emil Nolde, Gees Bend, William Crozier, Wolf Kahn, Wooden Interiors

I would not consider starting to design a collection before constructing a few mood boards.  They are an invaluable resource while designing.

For my new Autumn Collection the key inspirations are:

• Autumn fog combined with colourful autumn leaves
• Warm wooden interiors with an open fire
• The structure and stitching of the quilts of Gees Bend
• The paintings of William Crozier, Wolf Kahn, Emil Nolde and Judith Cain

First Drafts of the New Autumn Collection

Tags

Atmosphere, Gees Bend, nature, Wolf Kahn

It is a grey drizzly February day, so working on my new autumn collection with the glowing colours is quite a contrast.  I really cherish the days when I can work uninterrupted on my designs. I have been thinking of foggy autumn days with the autumn leaves appearing as a brilliant contrast. Inspiration has also been drawn from  Wolf Kahns pastels with their scratchy colourful marks and the quilts of Gees Bend.

Here are my first drafts of the New Collection.  They still need a bit of work and I need to put them into repeat.  I am quite excited about how I combined the composition of a quilt with my hand drawn designs.  The intention is to make the designs “painterly” and quite free.  I hope I am succeeding with this.