Continuing yesterday's theme, today's picture shows another variation. This time dye and pastel as mix media. I have found pastel to be amazingly permanent when applied to fabric and it can be added with speed. And speed is of the essence in the effects I'm searching for.
The semi-sheer quality of cotton voile is a important contributing factor in that it allows the passage of light.
I know how it feels because my experiments with painting on fabric with dye have resulted in hundreds of test samples. The variables are endless and I keep loosing track of which combination works best in terms of colour and permanence. In applying the dye there are many similarities to my technique of painting with watercolour. It hinges between freedom and control. The freedom being daring to throw down colour and the control being split-second time between one brushful and the next.
The frustration is the time spent between one experiment and the next. Dye needs a couple of days to settle into the fabric before it can be washed. Only then do I know if the colours have held fast.
The time on my hands is spent on the never ending task of keeping clear the path that leads down to the river, dealing with engineering emergencies and making a start on a retrospective collection of my paintings. Below is a foretaste from the collection: a watercolour that dates from 1969.
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The picture below, which shows work in progress on one of my sculptures, is a typical example of social media's horror of nakedness. It has been "flagged" time and time again. Thank goodness for Blogger!
The above applicable quote and graphic illustration I found on the internet. I'm not sure who it is attributed it to.
Anne Hollander in her book The Fabric of Visions - The Role of Drapery in Art has this to say about the creative potential of fabrics:
Representative art has always dwelt on the fascinating capacity of cloth to bunch, stretch, hang or flutter, to be smooth and unsmooth under different circumstances, to be wrought upon and then restored, and wrought upon differently another time.
If you add to the above texture and colour you may well ask: why, for the most part, is today's fashion so boring.
My foray into fashion design has giving me the ultimate creative challenge. In all other visual art forms I have found role models, in the world of fashion I cannot find a single source that inspires me. Today’s designers appear to be more concerned about the style of their dresses rather than in revealing the beauty of what lies beneath. I am visualizing from square one and creating from scratch.
My experiments explore the theme of Robert Herrick's poem which dates from the 16th century:
A
sweet disorder in the dress
Kindles
in clothes a wantonness;
A
lawn about the shoulders thrown
Into
a fine distraction;
An
erring lace, which here and there
Enthrals
the crimson stomacher;
A
cuff neglectful, and thereby
Ribands
to flow confusedly;
A winning wave, deserving note,
In
the tempestuous petticoat;
A
careless shoe-string, in whose tie
I
see a wild civility:
Do more bewitch me, than when art
Is too precise in every part.
America’s first-ever National Youth Poet Laureate, Amanda Gorman, reads “The Hill We Climb” at the inauguration of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.
Gorman has become the youngest poet ever to perform at a presidential inauguration, calling for “unity and togetherness” in her self-penned poem.
Amanda Gorman's poem and her flawless presentation is a credit to us all. She radiates the natural beauty of her race: no bleached skin, no straightened or false hair and no disguised facial features.
"It took me two years to paint like Raphael but a lifetime to paint like a child"
The quote is attributed to Pablo Picasso and the child in the picture is my grandson Enoch framed by one of his own masterpieces. His rapped attention is directed to me on my sewing machine, not I hasten to add at work on the latest addition to my range of fashion designs but making bean bags for himself.
Picasso went on to say:
What might be taken for a precocious genius is the genius of childhood. When the child grows up, it disappears without a trace.
This ties in with the theory that a child is born with 98% the creative potential of genius but by adulthood peer pressure and conformity has reduced it to less than 2%.
My lifetime's search for creative potential in others has always taken unexpected turns. I seldom find it where you might expect. For the most part art college graduates fall on unproductive ground. On the other hand, I am sometimes surprised to find unforeseen talents in my models.
The young lady who modelled for today's picture is a case in point. During our painting sessions conversation was limited to a few words. Her emails were even briefer. But I always suspected that something lurked beneath her reserved demeaner and that one day it would be revealed.
She went away to another land, as did many of my models after the hurricane, and we lost touch. A few days ago a brief email linked me to a YouTube series of unrehearsed and unscripted conversational videos she has made. In each episode she displays a rare ability of talking naturally and intimately face to face with the camera.
I stress "camera" rather than by the microphone alone. During the war years Billy Holt, an acquaintance that I featured in an earlier post, won the BBC's broadcaster of the year award by virtue of a long pregnant pause in one of this talks. If truth be know, he had fallen asleep at the microphone.
My protegee manages to do this on camera! One day soon I'll link you to the secret.
The critics went overboard in praise of Herman Wouk's 1965 Caribbean masterpiece "Don't Stop the Carnival"...An exuberant comedy spiced with sex and tragedy...compulsively, clock racingly readable, etc. etc. What the critics would not have known is how accurately the novel portrayed real life in the Caribbean half a century ago. I know - I was there!
My latest Bare Minimum design is based on a painting I made years ago of the Dominica carnival. In contrast to the restrained colours on many of my earlier designs, this time around I let rip and threw dye down left, right and center. The material is semi-shear cotton voile and the design is hand painted with fabric dyes.
At Hopetown things seemed to take a turn for the better when a family from the States expressed lukewarm interest in one of my paintings. The sale was touch and go but it carried my usual rash guarantee that if ever they decided to part with the painting I would buy it back.
For a few weeks we lived comfortably on the proceeds of the sale. Then a letter arrived saying they had changed their mind and would like to return the painting for a refund. In dismay I rowed across to my good friend, author and fellow sailor, Fritz Seyfarth. Fritz re-sealed the envelop and went searching for what he called his "Termination Stamp". The next day I dropped the letter back in post with the envelop clearly marked front and back "Deceased: Return to Sender".
Those of us who sailed small boats across oceans fifty years ago did so on a shoestring. When the shoestring got to an end we earned our way as best we could. As most of us had built or restored the boat we sailed, we were not without skills.
We sailed our thirty-foot ketch Sarah Hannah from the Caribbean to the Bahamas in 1978 and spent the hurricane season anchored in Man-O-War Key. We shared our anchorage with only four other boats. Just a short walk away was a deserted coral sand beach that stretched as far as the eye could see. It was on that beach, under a makeshift palm fond shelter, that I wrote a little book titled 101 Ways to Earn a Living Afloat.
The content was a collection from all the various trades that my fellow small boat sailors plied in order to survive. I wrote the text by hand. I had no lap-top or Word Document to turn to. Below is the index page.
Included in the contents was the trade of one young man who funded his sailing by making custom bikinis in the cabin his small boat using a hand-crank sewing machine . He told me it was a pleasant task that brought him into contact with countless attractive young ladies and material costs were negligible.
I can vouch for the negligible materials costs, if not the young ladies, because I can make eight bikini bottoms out of one yard of material!
I'm not sure what guarantee I can give with bikini bottoms but my little book ended with these words.
