The idea for Fading also came through my thinking about tulips. The figure is drawn onto a photograph I took of fading tulips.
My very first encounter with textile tulips was at the age of four. I have shown this cross stitch piece before on this blog - perhaps even more than once, but I make no apologies as I am rather pleased with what I achieved.
When towards the end of my publishing career I took up knitwear design the tulip was a form I explored for possible patterns.
I also played about on the computer to doodle a possible needlepoint design.
Then when I decided to leave the knitwear for hand stitching I attended a masterclass course which included a session playing with photographic enlargers. With no film involved I processed a tulip petal as if it were a negative, then developed the photographs.
Using one such image and other photographs I had taken of Queen of the Night tulips I made one of my first heat transfer print stitched pieces: a triptych. I'm afraid that this snap was taken recently, long after the piece was framed.
Is the tulip a cliché subject? I don't know, but it's one which draws me back with pleasure.
Not a cliché at all: tulips are extraordinary flowers, so elegant and beautiful. No wonder the Dutch grew and painted and loved them so much. As I write this, I have a vase with yellow tulips on my desk. I can never get enough of them and seeing images of them is a real pleasure.
ReplyDeleteI also think that the idea of fading is a fascinating one to explore. I look forward to seeing more.
Finally, I too, have many pieces of cross stitch I completed when I was a child, and many more I did later on.
Tulips are so sculptural, and are to mind the best suited flowers to vases, making a living ceramic piece. I love the way they change from bud to dying. It seems that the fading tulips and their falling petals have a visual vigour which is far from the usual idea of fading.
DeleteHow many of us Greek daughters of a certain generation have drawers if not cupboards full of eryoheira!
It is interesting to see the different ways you have approached images of tulips over many years. The last two are approcahing abstraction - fascinating.
ReplyDeleteI too find it interesting from time to time to look back to my beginnings in this art/textile exploration. The final two images come from a time when I was very much trying things out, and had no particular statement to make. I suppose I was more concerned with technique than with content - although I did like my tulip piece enough to have it framed, and it still pleases me as I pass it every day.
DeleteNowadays I hope to be more concerned with ideas, with the techniques a means to an end. Whether the work I produced before is better than now - well, I sometimes wonder. But those thoughts must be pushed aside because that way madness lies.
We all have a tulip or two in our creative history, I think. They are enticing for many reasons, not least the amazing phenomenon of tulip mania in the seventeenth century, and the eventual discovery that the flamboyant markings and distortions, eg parrot tulips, are caused by a virus. Who knew!
ReplyDeleteI have a lovely book: The Tulip by Anna Pavord
ReplyDeleteFascinating indeed to see how things have changed for you. As to your comment about technique over content. I suspect we are all more concerned with the former than the latter at the start of something. We need to build up a repertoire of techniques to express our ideas. Without the techniques, ideas die. I certainly feel that has been true for me. Only recently do I feel I'm beginning to have ideas and then think how to realise them, though if I'm honest, the two seem to develop alongside one another, each feeding the other.
ReplyDeleteI so agree that without techniques the ideas die - as seen with the invention of language.
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