The Staining Process

I've started working on a new piece for my woman with flowers series.  It is a combination of quick gestural sketches of the female body with botanical stains that act as an area of release or  of activity in the body.  At times, the stained areas seem to bleed out, perhaps evoking the sense of releasing a painful or dark memory.  In other pieces, the stained areas dance out of the body in joy.
Here's some photos of the beginning of it all, before any painting happens!  The flowers are soaked, the paper is soaked, and finally they are laid down on the areas I've chosen.  Once they dry a beautiful pattern of shape and colour is left behind.  What it will look like is always a mystery.

Woman with Flowers

Woman with flowers is a series of works using quick sketches of the female form in charcoal and dead flower stains that have been painted over.  The sketches are meant to evoke or suggest an area of the body in a fluid, gestural way.  Each one is a different view and presents a different reality, some being light and gentle and others denser and more powerful.  This is a first of the series.  I love working with the contrast of the definite charcoal marks and the soft fluidity of the flower stains and paint.  The final addition was gold leaf cascading down towards the form.

Veil - Hand sown tea bag quilt

Second to my love affair with creating is tea.  Usually creating and a cup of tea go hand in hand.  For a tea drinker like me, a cup of tea marks time in the day....early morning, mid-afternoon or when I need a moment to just breathe with an idea.  It also marks time and moments in life.  This tea bag quilt is made of about 100 tea bags that I've dried, opened, cleaned and sewn together.  It represents the moments of my life at that time.  Some were ordinary, others  exquisitely extraordinary.  It was a time of grieving the loss of someone very close to me and the making of this quilt helped to memorialize it for me.