A peek from the studio ... some quick close ups / sections from recent work...
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| acrylic and ink on linen |
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| acrylic on linen |
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| working with iron oxide pigment |
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| iron oxide and acrylic on wood |
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| close up |
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| acrylic on canvas |
Thought it would be worth musing on some things happening in the studio ... loving the iron oxide pigment! The hours are passing as I work with materials and ideas ... shifting them around!
Its good to step back... get some thoughts from others perhaps!
Its late... better go,
Ciao,
S
25 comments:
L-O-O-V-E! these! Sophie. You look like you are having so much fun with color and edges. Can I borrow one or two and post them sometime soon?
Sorry to hear about the jury duty! And sorry I've had to turn into one of those people who have to say sorry and warn people off of it these days. Hope your eventual civic experience is more edifying and affirming than mine!
ps must now must must post some painters that i like who do some similar things and see what you think!
#1,3, and 4 are the srongest for me. Especially #3. It might be because I have clouds on the mind. Iron oxide huh? Cool. So can you play with the oxidization? Also, It looks like the closeup is shiny. That is seductive for me.
I also was wishing you would do textile designs......
I just relooked. It is #3 that is my favorite. I think I like the mystery that the iron oxide is creating!
Oh and YUM!
xxooo
Mary
I am impressed by your images, and most of the first.
best, Ralf
yummy yummy yummy..
I can see some of these as fabric designs..
prints on fabric?
Sew thenm up..mmmmmm
Hello lovely people
...who visited while I was sleeping and left comments for me to read this morning. You have no idea how delightful it is to wake up to this.
Well... of course you do know ..... we all love comments that encourage and inspire us to further thinking and creating... thats why bloggers are such wonderful people!
I went to sleep exhausted last night! Many long hours in the studio 15 minutes from home attempting to realise ideas from working in the Seed Lab and pondering the seed heritage across Millennia and how we are letting that disappear... mostly without realising!
I still cant comprehend how executives at the 6 biggest transnationals (Monsanto etc) can sleep at night when their ventures are deliberately swallowing up the biodiversity of our global inheritance ...first the 10 or 12 most common grains....now vegetable seed stocks globally.
Thats quite aside from considering habitat loss. Thats another whole story!
Lots of questions weighing heavily on my mind... how does one speak to that loss.
I paint...
and I wonder...
I doubt my work and the capacity of it to say anything. I dont want to be didactic... or illustrative!
Mmm...thinking out loud...
well... I just appreciate you stopped and left some thoughts to really cheers me on!
S xo
Your'e a darling MP!
I think I will be able to do something about jury duty as it clashes with the culminating events of the year that require my attendance without question!
On edges.... yes I find them absolutely compelling ... esp when they are not too regular...or too straight. The fraying edge ...the obvious selvedge ...for me it brings to mind interaction, otherness... histories...co-existing realities.
yes...that is it...co-existing realities... something I think life requires us to really take on board. There's not one way, not one story, not one thing...even if there is some unifying whole that we sense!
Yes... you can post some images... lovely! Look forward to seeing the painters you find. Its interesting how different ones see ... what is noticed, connected with....similarities and differences. Very glad for your thoughts!
S x
Good to read your thoughts on this Mary!
The oxide is a pigment which here has been applied directly onto a absorbent ground... thus giving a very earthy feel to the surface. I had a long exchange with a maker of paints and such when in Melbourne about ways to use the pigment. Ive sealed this with a sprayed on good quality fixative...hence the look I was not sure about evident in the 5th image.
Im glad you liked the way it worked in #3 ...that is perhaps where it is doing what I hoped it might do... and I was quite pleased that it did retain that very earthy... and i like what you write ... mysterious feel to it!...
Speaking textiles...I was commissioned over 2 years (in the later 90's) to produce designs for a textile corporation for a boutique range of bedlinen. What was SO disconcerting was that they found my work, came to me, asked me to produce x,y, and z ... then proceeded to alter it till it no longer had the life in it it had started with.
I guess that put me off - that and the payment structure. I dont wish to personally produce textiles and Ive not come across an operation that would suit/be interested in what I do.
Much appreciated Mary!
S x
Hi Ralf,
its good to hear from you... your keen eye is most appreciated...thank you for popping in!
Hi Denise,
Your'e sweet!
First thing I ever bought when i got a real job was a sewing machine. I went ballistic on it for a few years... Then I did often print fabric and sew it up in unusual ways ... influenced very much by Japanese fashion circa mid 80's.
I should dig out some photos of hilarious stuff from when teaching some cheeky school kids in a remote coastal region! If the boys didn't complete their fabric project (t-shirt) I made them pose in my dresses (yes!) for a photo shoot on the beach! They loved it!
The girls all produced amazing complete outfits and loved every minute of it!
Perhaps I have brought more of an influence from that era with me than I thought!
ciao,
S
I'm studying your new pieces incorporating the frayed edges and am loving them Sophie.
Great to have your imput Robyn!
I have worked on and off with the frayed edge but was thinking to make more of it for this series of work.
S
Beautiful, simple forms....so elegant and free in the moment of making! Lovely...thank you!
Hi Patti,
its refreshing to read words like this... and having admired your artfulness with composition just today its indeed lovely to have your thoughts!
S
Sophie these are absolutely beautiful. I love them!
Your studio time is very well spent.
Keep on creating.
x Robyn
Hi Robyn...
It was starting to feel like it wasn't getting where I wanted things to be... despite the hours spent ..so this was a really good little exercise ...posting some sections of work and gaging responses....really motivating and so loveley that you (and others) made time to add some thoughts...lovely ones at that...my heart is warmed!
Thanks
S x
Love these designs but the first one with the circles is fantastic, this is one of my favourites.
Hi Ro,
thanks for popping in with your upbeat comment. interestingly I was unsure of this first work... it sure is great to receive feedback...
Thank you kindly,
S
These are wonderful Sophie! No.3 is intriguing - it gives me a strange and exhilarating feeling of wanting to step inside it and find out what's on the other side. Beautiful!
And I (literally!) gasped with delight when I saw the similarity between No.1 and the paper offcuts of a project I've been working on. Lovely synchronicity :)
How lovely to read your words Suzanne!
Re no 3....interesting thought... I have long been obsessed with representing multiple realities. Combination of moving around in my life... the sensation that builds of living in more than one place that comes out of that... new science...thinking about life as made up of particles....energy... whether micro or macro reality.... and then of course considering seeds in relation to all that ...through millennia... hidden...tiny yet so potent...
the search for ways to intimate all that lives in this work.
I just looked at your paper offcuts...really uncanny... amazing. Ive been playing with a very simplified motif of a seedpod these past 7 years...cant keep away from it... it consists of the ovoid shape with a number of circles placed within it...I then have composed endless rearrangements of them in ink, acrylic, sometimes just using lines... endless variations on a theme...
That is a spectacular coincidence... morphic resonance... do you know Rupert Sheldrake's theory of morphic resonance? Its in wiki!
best,
Sophie x
Ps will visit you for a chat on this!
Ooh lovely layers and places to peek into, what's behind
and where will the journey go. Marvelous new work. xox Corrine
Delightful words thank you Corrine!
Where will the journey go...great question!
have a great weekend!
S xo
wonderful glowing work...i love the iron oxide... what sort of size are these pieces?
sally
Thanks Sally... appreciate your feedback!
Good question!
i've included mostly close-ups here... so...
1# is a a section of a work thats 45 cm x 45 cm.
2# is also enlarged and from a work 45 x 45 cm.
3# is fullsize - 70 x 80 cm
4# was an experiment on plywood - 36 X 48 cm
5# is a tiny section of a work I just added to the archive blog last night - a i mtr square work!
the iron oxide was a material I needed to play with quite a bit a couple of weeks ago whilst determining how it might be employed in the body of work I'm preparing.
The use of a good fixative results in the glow... on 4#....whereas it is far less obvious on 3#! The effect on 4# almost takes the work off into another realm altogther..perhaps not something that well sit well with the other work.
Still thinking about that.
Good to hear your thoughts,
Sophie
Hi Sophie,
Just wanted to pop back to say thanks very much for pointing me in the direction of Sheldrake and his morphic resonance theory. I've been googling and reading up on it - fascinating stuff. When he (briefly) referenced the work of Ernst Haeckel (whose exquisite 19th century depictions of radiolarians I cannot get enough of! :) I was hooked. More research for me, I think. Thanks again for the food for thought!
(P.S. My paper offcuts are the 'leftovers' of a far more prosaic project than your work here, and the work of Sheldrake. But I frequently find the 'offcuts' and unconsidered 'leftovers' of the projects I work on far more interesting than the intended end result. Hmm, definitely something to be learnt here!)
Suzanne,
that's really quite exciting to read that that it took you back to Haeckel... as well as giving you other good food for thought.
The syncronicity was loaded with possibility in this sense.
Its interesting that things that exist in the world of science are often visalised by artists - sometimes before its been possible to 'see' this occuring through science.
Your paper cutouts have allowed you to tap into another dimension... visually and in the mind...dont you love it.
So you do the commission work and you do the exploratory work with the remains of the job...THAT is seeing !
Isn't it wonderful... that is so often the case... in the discarded experiments we hold the keys to far greater possibilities... its the case for so many of us when we work.
Lovely to hear back from you on this... Love to see where you go down the track....
best,
S
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