Empress Wu Designs with Wilma

  Since 2 August, I have dedicated  about 30 minutes to an hour each day to complete a stitching meditation. I have been focussing on the colours in my garden.... yellow has been predominant. So many plants in our garden have yellow flowers and with Spring and the coming Summer, these are eye catching.  Yellow is just one of those colours that shouts brightness, sunshine, and positivity - it is puzzling that it has also has such negative connotations.   Image below from  https://www.color-meanings.com/yellow-color-meaning-the-color-yellow/ Do you wear yellow?  . ..  yellow is well and truly the ultimate fashion trend when it comes to color of the year. As they do every year,  Pantone  met with the creative industries last December to decide on the star shade for the next 12 months. And, for the very first time, it was not one but two colours that the American color chart settled on. In 2020, in a desire to appease and a with certain need to b...

 Chatting with Anne Kempton , Timeless Textiles Gallery,  about my textile art portrait of artist friend , Margaret Adams  - exhibition re- opening on  4 November  .  ‘Ain’t the Archies ‘ Exhibition      https://youtu.be/rZKbzvjjsWA Timeless Textiles Gallery 90 Hunter Street , Newcastle NSW 

  It's been a long time since creating a tag for the Tag Tuesday  fortnightly challenge....  The current theme is 'orange and purple' .   I made this tag for the challenge as a collage constructed from magazine pages , with a photo transferred as another layer. The photo is one of a tree in my street  and from a laser print, I  transferred  part of it  to the collage background with acrylic medium. With such bold colours, the silhouette of the tree branches seems to enhance the vibrancy of these colours.  I am always interested in working out why colours seem to "go together" , so it's always good to go back to the colour wheel.  While not quite analogous, orange and purple are close  secondary colour neighbours  and they present as a brilliant pairing as they also come from the opposite hot/cool families of colour.  We only have to look at Nature to see how well orange and purple go together.    References...

  Collage made from magazine pages...  Do you have some old magazines that you know should be thrown out or  donated to the op shop (thrift shop) ?  I have a better option - better for the environment and your own creative development.   Look at the photos in your magazines, and cut out sections  so the image is not easily recognizable. (In the example above, the three small collages were made from cutting up photos from just one double page of a magazine.)   Then, place the pieces down on some plain paper - white or black are both good, but you may prefer other colours. Rearrange the pieces until you have a pleasing composition.  You may need to re-cut/resize some of the pieces or even tear them.  I admit that in a couple of cases, I turned the paper over and found something better on the other side than I had intended to use.   The images  above were originally of  a doorway, an outdoor area awning and some bar...

  Artists have always found inspiration  in their every day activities. The very early cave paintings are records of daily life - hunting expeditions for food and responses to the elements.  From the 1800s, Van Gogh's artworks about the daily work of peasants have charmed art lovers and  even in the Pop Art movement, the colourful art of everyday edible items like ice cream cones, cakes and hot dogs by Wayne Thiebaud have become collectable.  It is no wonder that during a pandemic lockdown when walking in the neighbourhood  is  the only exercise allowed  that these walks  take on a new fascination.  Last week, I recorded my walk on a strip of  paper.... I joined a variety of  drawing and found papers  and added /scraped gesso to the surface. As I walked, I  drew with pencil shapes I saw on the way and then came home and added ink and pencil marks to fill in some detail. As you can see from the photo above, I cut the l...