August in the studio

I’ve been spending more time in my studio than in Steart Marshes this month. Only a few weeks to bring all my ideas together into resolved pieces for the ‘Change’ exhibition. So many ideas and images to sift through and plan a coherent body of work. My head and sketchbook are full of ideas and potential starting points and I’m keen to start playing with my willow.

Lengths of fine cane were soaked and when pliant, made into these formations and temporarily wrapped until they dried. This gave interesting ‘kinks’ into each strip that could then be further gently manipulated into other formations that seem to suggest plant, grasses, ripples in water perhaps and also delicate lines of insects?

I’ve added lines of bright green to suggest fresh growth; then moulded silk fibre forms that could relate to new life. Watch this space for further developments of this idea.

Another set of shapes that I am intrigued by are these overlapping curved shapes formed by the cracks in mud. So I processed more dyed willow into oval curved shapes and laid the resulting shapes overlapping each other to create the same sort of shapes. Working out a way of holding these together and will post more images later.

Playing with shorter curved lengths of dyed and wrapped willow. Each star point is held with a piece of lovely frayed and faded weathered fabric that ‘wintered’ at Steart Marshes.

 

The left image shows two layers and the right image, four layers. The image below is stacked with all ten layers. Thinking of a title around ‘wishing upon a star’.

Several drawings in my sketchbook were inspired by the sensuous curves created by the ebb and flow of water,defined by the  stepped bands around large ‘pools’ of water. It was invigorating to make such sweeping marks with  brush and ink.

The page above has been collaged with sections of two drawings to suggest changes in the water surface during the drawing session that day as do the two drawings below.

  

Starting to manipulate the dyed and wrapped willow lengths to form similar shapes and pleased with the way the willow held it’s unusual form to describe the curves..

Tried adding threads acrss the voids and making more curves and loops.

Further developments as I write this so more news soon.