Tuesday, January 08, 2013

Paris Homage to Dufy

Up way too early... worries I guess. I  painted the image I showed in my previous blog post and it all looked good .... except..... I forgot to reverse the image didn't I and yet  remembered to reverse the writing- elementary my dear, but darn it - what to do?? The Eiffel tower on the right bank simply does not look right.If I use a polyester non woven that is transparent enough the colour will go through to the back. I am used to working with the paper I use in my printer but for this large piece I used a paper tablecloth. The paper from my printer normally sticks to the polyester non-woven,in the heat transferring process- so that you can re-iron areas without movement. Not so with the table cloth paper- it moved all over the place.

and I ended up with a blurred unusable image ( i am also auditioning some fabrics behind the polyester non-woven)- very disappointing and a sign of my worries.Do I start all over again- it took  me quite some  time to draw and paint an image this large- is it good enough, will it work- all those self doubting moments turned into a flop.

It is also very very hot at the moment, and extreme fire danger and already there have been some quite devastating bushfires in Tasmania and other parts of Australia.

So some desultory stitching on what I am calling tangerine dupioni travelling blanket for the moment. It did start out as a yellowish dupioni, but once I washed the silk it turned into the most beautiful tangerine colour- a colour for the soul and the heat of summer.The design  for the moment just involves attaching black woollen circles but will have interconnecting lines between the circles and is actually inspired by a 1780's french fabric which  looks very modern and very much like an Australian indigenous design
 The image is from a book entitled Les  Arts decoratifs Francais by Stafford Cliff and published by Thames and Hudson. In particular  i was looking at the fabric sample second left. Anyway the reason I was looking at fabrics from this period was that a French explorer by the name of La Perouse landed at Botany Bay within weeks of Captain Arthur Phillip having claimed Australia for England in 1788. The Atlas book and engravings of La Perouse's entire journey can be seen  here, which was published posthumously as la Perouse disappeared with two ships somewhere  off the Solomon Islands in 1788.

However Antoine Bruny d’Entrecasteaux  went in search of La Perouse  and explored Tasmania which now has a peninsula named after him and took back to France many botanical samples which were almost lost 
due to the foment of the French Revolution, but for the interception of Sir Joseph Banks. Indeed sometime subsequent Napoleon built Josephine a garden which included many banksia's  as there was a great interest in Australian flora and fauna.

So how is this connected to tangerine  travellers blanket you might ask and why am I babbling about France and french discoveries and french gardens? There is a connection- it will form part of my France book- establishing connections, because the textile motif is all about connections, and then the fact that we could almost have been french, and well the  fabric looks  as if it could have been designed by an indigenous Australian and yet wasn't- and then the fact that indigenous Australians had so many stories which were almost totally ignored by the early explorers and settlers. I suppose I could have just stuck with the design of the fabric as the inspiration, but La Perouse's story has always fascinated me and I  wanted to reflect his story by using a contemporaneous  textile design- and reflecting on his journey.

4 comments:

Nina Marie said...

Its so hard to think of it as super hot - while we have 2 ft of snow on the ground. Still I seem to get so much more done in when its warm and sunny rather than cold. Weird I know since I end up doing a lot of sewing in my sports bra - LOL! I was hoping that you'd join us on Fridays - for my Off the Wall Friday - its an art quilt link up with other like minded artists. We've found it wonderfully encouraging and motivating! Link any creative post any week!

Fiona Wright said...

it might have been a bit of a fizzer with the drawing transfer, but your story and the musing on connections is lovely...I love the way your mind associates things and draws them togther- the world really is such a close place, thanks
Fiona

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Patrise said...


I love your red and black blanket, and the way you have connected France with the indigenous people around Sydney. I think artists do their best work under pressure. Not much consolation I know but you have to keep going as your work is wonderful and I wish I could afford to buy some of it.