Still paisley-ing

Paisley

I'm in the middle of making a book - needing a bit of time to let my head rest.  So I looked through some stuff I had been collecting for ages on Paisley.  I love this pattern, probably because it takes me back to when I was a teenager in the 1960's, and I have started to try out a few paisley designs of my own.  Just a bit of sketching.  You can see by the different background colours that this is a sketchbook I made from recycled paper.

©Christine Linton

Stormy skies

Procion dyes on voile 

©Christine Linton

Paper collage, and some magnificent Aboriginal art

I wanted to make a sample paper collage to depict a wild garden, brilliant with colour.  This is just as a background. I tried my hand-dyed papers, but they were too muted, too harmonious and gentle on the eye.  I wanted something that leapt out at me.  I pulled out the commercial papers, coloured tissue paper, crepe paper.  This sample gave me what I wanted.  The ragged edges don't show because I scanned it rather than photographed it for convenience, so keep in mind I always leave edges ragged.  The colours are a good contrast.  The piece going in a different direction is a flap, I had in mind using it to half-hide a flower under - not quite sure yet if that works.  What do you think?

wild garden collage, commercial papers ©Christine Linton

I attended an exciting exhibition yesterday at Tandanya, some very talented Aboriginal artists, and bought a sketchbook in the Tandanya shop, with a beautiful cover designed by an Aboriginal artist, and yes I did check with the assistant if it was ok to post a photo of it on my blog.  Apparently if something is made in multiples like this and bought then it is ok to publicly show it.  So the assistant said.

Art by Janelle Stockman Napaltjarri, "Dancing Bird Spirits 2008"

This is so beautiful, so feathery.  Here is some more of her art.  What a talented lady (now deceased).

White can be soft or hard

I was wondering what to put in my blog post today.  I didn't have a sample or experiment to show, so I looked at my blog reader.  (Apparently Google Reader is shutting down soon but that's too hard to think about, more technology to investigate - I have all my favourite blogs bookmarked anyway.)

So I looked at Sweetpea Path and found these wonderful "white" photos including beautiful white lace - gorgeous.  Then I looked at Spirit Cloth and Jude had also put "white" photos on, as part of her What If.

I thought, do I have anything white?  I found something different, white bark on a tree trunk showing the trails made by an insect.

burnt tree peeling and showing the insect trails inside 

©Christine Linton

Creative Fusion - fusing creativity with artistic techniques

At last, the culmination of all the work we put in last year at Marden - our exhibition starts tomorrow 2nd April and runs till 26th April, at the Pepper Street Gallery in Magill, South Australia - any who are able, we'd love to see you there.  It is wonderful to see all the students' work finished and displayed, everything there is so different from the next piece and I like every single piece.  (This is most unusual for me.)  It is called Creative Fusion.  As we can't show anything we are exhibiting online until the end of the exhibition, here is an experimental wax flower garden.  I was working with the mini-iron tip, tiny screws of tissue, which gives the flowers texture, being 3D relief, maybe not obvious here; I worked on one of my free sample glossy photo papers.

flower garden in wax 

©Christine Linton