I've chosen an image of a poppy that I took in my garden earlier this year. I feel a special affinity for poppies, an affinity grown from roots deep in my childhood, planted when Dorothy, after a long and difficult journey, saw the Emerald City "closer and prettier than ever", but had to first pass through the deceptively beautiful and deadly field of poppies before finally reaching it.
That Georgia O'Keefe choose the poppy as one of her floral subjects drew me to her, and my photo of my poppy is reminiscent of O'Keefe's paintings. O'Keefe felt that art should not capture photographic realism, but should express the artist's personal ideas and feelings. She is quoted, "Nobody sees a flower, really - it is so small - we haven't time, and to see takes time, like to have a friend takes time".
So, I have endeavored to take my poppy and look at it closely, but by division, not dissection. I had hoped to disassociate my mind from the vision of leaf and petal, and reduce the image to shapes of light and dark colors fitted together. I am hoping to capture these shapes in a sort of non-literal translation, to see what my mind will make of the reassembled, reinterpreted pieces.
I began the work by dividing the picture into nine equal pieces. I am new to the techniques of embroidery and beading, and have felt this lack of stitching expertise in previous projects, and so I have thought this project, as conceived, would be well-suited executed as a sampler, in which I could learn new embroidery stitches. Having the goal of practicing stitches would help disconnect my mind from trying to literally represent petals and leaf.
At present, I have cut nine squares of cotton material, one for each of the nine sections of the photo of my poppy. In the photo below, I show a sample piece of fabric, which I have painted prior to stitching.
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Diana, have you ever read, "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain" by (I think) Betty Edwards? She encourages her readers to try drawing images upside down so that the mind only sees what's there instead of how it feels the image should look. Your exercise with the poppy (dividing the photo into nine sections) reminds me of that book. I'll be interested in reading what you discover as you actually begin to explore each of the nine sections. The artist can't help but bleed parts of herself into her art.
ReplyDeleteLOL! Lisa, I have read a book by Betty Edwards, but it was "Drawing on the Artist Within". It made me laugh that you should mention that technique, because it is exactly what I had in mind to do. It's been many years since I read Edwards, and I had to hunt down the book to check the title...I'm glad you brought her up, because now that the book is in my hand, I see it is well worth another read. I'll check out the other title by her, also.
ReplyDeleteThanks for being my first commentator! It's true that things have a way of coming out in the execution of art...I always begin with an idea that it's about one thing, and after the completion I'm very often surprised to find that it was really about something so much deeper. A large part of my satisfaction lies in that discovery.