Friday 19 February 2016

2 Dimensional Felt Pictures: experimenting with colour


 My studio is a little overrun with beautifully coloured wool and luscious fibres. On a related, curious note, one of the steps to create the smooth, wet/needle felted creatures I've been making is to "shave" them - the resultant brightly coloured nubbles and fluff were just too beautiful to throw away. All of this stuff has inspired me to get back to experimenting with colour and texture - florals are a great option for doing just that.




I also have a stash of prefelt that looks quite "quiltish." After flying over farmland and prairie many times, I tend to associate patchwork quilts with planted fields. I've been on a bit of a raven kick for a while so decided to include them taking a bird's eye view.  


After working on these fairly detailed pieces, it was a nice change to create a dominant, plain blended background, experimenting with feathering wool tops and white silk hanky fibres to create a sunrise. Driving around my rural area the other day, I was struck by the number of birds that are hardy enough to overwinter and greet our cold, late, northern sun rise. 

But no matter what I do, I always seem to come back to mountain landscapes. 

A hanging epiphany! 
These pieces are all fairly small (80 to 160 square inches). I decided to keep them as simple wall hangings. After years of experimenting with different hanging methods, I've come up with what I think is an elegantly simple approach. Earth magnets are concealed on the back within small cloth pouches. These suspend the pieces nicely on gridwall display structures and can be easily used on home walls - just hammer nails into the wall - leaving the nails (or screws) protruding  from the wall causes the piece to look like it is floating off the wall. 


No comments:

Post a Comment