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!