Landscape series, 3rd post

If you look to my previous posts in September you'll see I have been doing a series of pieces looking at landscapes or at least my interpretation of them. I am showing my work in various stages of progression to give an idea of the processes I use in their creation.

I've started another piece in this series simply called "The Island" I've been using a lot of fibre dyes lately, particularly painted onto velvet and have used this in the canopy of the island. So far I've got the island itself mapped out and have just started blocking in the water, night sky and moon.



This is the other previously untitled piece based on the bush fires. I'm finding it quite hard to do. Its very black and dark but I have some ideas on how to get some more depth and dramatic lighting into it.

Some new work

Here's some new work I've just finished. They're part of a series of 10 pieces I have done for the 2010 Mardi Gras Visual Art Gallery which I've been accepted into. The exhibition will be held during the Mardi Gras festival in the Tap Gallery, Darlinghurst, Sydney.

Its been a busy month with work and I haven't had a chance to publish any posts recently. But I've got some pieces in the Liverpool city art prize, opening at the Casula Powerhouse today the 7th November and running to the 31st January.

Both pieces "The Garden In Stanmore" and "Cross Country" were inspired from a move to the inner west suburbs of Sydney. Particularly living right under the flight path does bring out the unfortunate closet plane spotter in you!

"The Garden In Stanmore" Fabric applique and acrylic 61cms x 84cms

"Cross Country" Fabric applique and acrylic 61cms x 84cms

Recycled Art

The materials I use in my work are whatever I have to hand. My background is in costume and fashion and I still work as a costume cutter on many different theatre productions. I always have lots of off cuts from costumes I have made, little scraps of fabric which are too small to make a garment and would otherwise get thrown in the bin. These bits of material have formed the basis for my work, and I keep them in big bins in my studio which I dip into to pick out different scraps to piece together for a new work. I like this idea of recycling something that would end up in the bin and turning it into something beautiful. In this day and age I think artists along with everyone else should be thinking of sustainability wherever possible.

These two pieces I did earlier this year particularly in mind for a "recycled art" competition I entered. As well as using my bins of scrap fabric I went and got old fabric sample cards from the Reverse Garbage Co-Op in Marrickville, which is this big shed full of junk which people give things to that they have no use for but some one else might. I love it, its an artists haven. Also I cut up some old worn out jeans and sewed them together to make the base fabric rather than using canvas like I usually do.

"Two Black Swans" Fabric applique and acrylic 84cms x 61cms

"Black Swan" Fabric applique and acrylic 84cms x 61cms

Landscape series, 2nd post

I've managed to get the fourth piece in my series started. As of yet no name decided but its of dark bushland with a fire nearby. The idea for this piece came from a sketch I did of some bushland but it was around the time of Black Saturday last summer when the terrible fires happened in Victoria.

The other pieces have progressed a lot too. The structure of my sunrise is well mapped out. I love using velvet in my work cause it has such richness. You can't get blacker than a black silk velvet, it just has so much depth. But I've recently got some silk / rayon velvet and some new fabric dyes / paints and I've been experimenting with adding colour and brush strokes into the velvet. I've used it in my on going obsession with palm trees in the moonlight night piece. Needs a lot more work done on it but the base is there.

So this is the series so far. I'll keep them in order, with the newest at the end.

A Landscape Series and it progression.

I'm currently working on a series of 6 new pieces. Initially when I started doing these textile pieces they were very much portraits of people I was inspired by. However since moving to my new studio just over a year ago my work has taken a different direction. This series could almost be termed landscapes although they will be my interpretation of this style. I think of them as both internal and external landscapes.

I thought I would over the next few months post images of these pieces as they progress to show how I work and the technique of creating an image that I have developed. However I do find the work very difficult to photograph. Its very hard to capture all the textures. But hopefully you'll get an idea.

What I do is like painting with fabrics. I start with the basic composition and then put down blocks of fabric and paint, usually acrylic, onto a piece of canvas.Then I add more and more layers of fabric and paint to build up a collage of colours and textures. This piece came from a sketch I did on the coastal headland at the mouth of Sydney harbour. Its going to be a tangle of undergrowth and burnt vegetation with the sea and sky in the background. In this piece I've also started using some new fabric dyes painting then onto some crepe fabric for the flowers. I want the end image to be very intense and almost oppressive.

Then this piece also came from a sketch at the same place. This is the very basic beginning, the very first marks made on the canvas. Its going to be a sunrise over the Pacific ocean. I want it to be quite a cliched and quitch image, a bit of a Hollywood sunrise really. The white fabrics I've stitched on there are the first bits of light.

Then this third piece is of the moonlight sky in the back garden. What I've got on the canvas so far swirls of light and clouds in the sky. It will have a palm tree in silhouette over that creating two planes to the piece.


The other three pieces I haven't started yet but they are becoming clearer in my head. Hopefully I'll be able to post images of the start of them fairly soon. I'm trying to give myself a deadline for these works or else I feel like I'm not getting anywhere with my work. Its very hard to fit it all in with everything else and the constant need to pay the rent. So I want them done by the end of November. I'm probably totally kidding myself, we'll see!

Me and my first blog

Well this is my first post ever so I just thought I'd start to talk a bit about myself and where my artwork comes from and put up some images.

I am from Dublin in Ireland and went to art college after leaving school. There after a years foundation course I specialised in fashion and have since worked both in costume and fashion for about 15 years, mostly on the technical construction side. Then about 7 years ago I started creating textile artworks, really just using all the off cuts that I had left from various costumes made over the years. It came out of a need to get back to something more artistic, a way of expressing myself and have some creative ownership. I felt like I was always making up someone else's vision and I found that I was getting frustrated with that.

So the first piece I did was inspired by the most lovely person I had once worked with. She was a transexual called Arlene. We had spent many hours sewing together having great chats in a tiny room somewhere in Dublin on a TV production of the magnificent Ambersons. I always remembered her so I wanted to do a portrait of her.

"Arlene" Fabric applique and acrylic 168cms x 106cms

Then after that over several years I did various portraits of many different people. Always using scraps of fabric which I would collage together adding layers of fabric and paint and stitching it all together to create the image. All of my pieces contain bits of fabric left over from many different actors I had made costumes for as well as clothes for friends and myself. I was just using what I had to hand, and over the years have developed a technique of my own, combining fabric collage and applique and painting, to create an image.

"Luke" Fabric applique and acrylic 86cms x 66cmc

"Geraldine" Fabric applique and acrylic 84cms x 104cms