Serious Art Practice Today

Back to working on the Steve McCurry Quilt. The idea for this quilt came from wanting to use thread painted images to celebrate age and wisdom. I have long been a fan of Steve McCurry's photography and when I asked permission to use some of his work in my thread painting they responded so positively that the quilt has morphed into being a celebration of Steve's work. I hope to have Steve with his camera in the middle with selected images around him. The final presentation has changed during the process and I am now thinking of mounting the portraits on teabag died and stamped fabric like shown in a previous blog post below. I might have to brew up a heap of teabags rather than just using the recycling process for that but we will see how I go. For those who might be familiar with Steve's photography, this is a closed up portrait of the man with the spanner on his shoulder. For the past year I havent worked on this quilt because I had this burst of entering competitions (or trying to) and now I have decided to return to just doing stuff for my own enjoyment. A prominent tutor told me at one stage that this type of thread painting wasn't art but merely sewing by numbers. That affected me for a while but I don't agree. The layering of thread colour and direction is so important to get the photo to come alive and I love how the picture develops under the needle. It often takes several layers of rayon thread to create the dimension and getting the eyes right is always a challenge but he comes to life once the glint is added. Folds of clothing are another challenge. Lots of quite boring background work until the highlights go in.