Wednesday, August 29, 2012

Playing with Purpose

I let myself get behind on tasks whilst I was mouldering in the doldrums- and that's not good, so I need to be clever and have multi-uses for the things I have to make for an article for Downunder Textiles.And I have enjoyed the playing so much I am having a really good time with it and have also seen some possibilities for work on the France book.I have done breakdown and/or polychromatic printing in the past- way back in the early nineties, and then again about 4-5 years ago, and then I let it go again.But I am having a lot of fun with it at the moment. I started simple as i wanted to remind myself of the process and here is one thing I have come up with:

One of the pleasant memories of last year was visiting the St. Blaise des Simples, Milly la ForĂȘt  where Jean Cocteau painted the inside of the chapel. Cocteau's cat is iconic and much known, and he painted one inside the chapel.
 I love this little painting of a cat ( being a cat lover myself) and I have looked and looked at the photo I took , thinking how can I create Cocteau's cat without exactly making Cocteau's cat? So I painted a screen  with thickened dye paint- the dye runs a bit so you can't exactly control what will happen, which is fine because that would change the cat  as well.
I then  screened printed the image onto fabric with orange thickened dye- the fabric below was my fourth print and all the lines were starting to disappear and the  fabric seemed to simply consists of dots and some lines, and a vague cat.This is the best part of the process- you will never be quite sure how the fabric will end up!

  Then last but not least- stitched below- cat resurrected and  it looks different enough from Cocteau's cat but still references it.Cocteau's cat has raised my spirits no end and I am excited and leaping with ideas.Just wish I had more than one screen to print with, but the sun is cooperating and well..... the muse is back I think!

There is still time to enrol in the online linocutting/stamping class- just email me for further information.

4 comments:

Chiara Z said...

That looks like fun! Glad to hear the muse is back.

Annette said...

wonderful cat.... wonderful inspiration..
hugs

Margaret Cooter said...

Wonderful!

Anonymous said...

It is a beauty and is very easy to make your on screen.....
I have it on paper of you want.
Petra