The other day I was setting up my dad's cable modem and new PC. He showed me several website of Boothbay artist Robert Colburn and several others. One of them quoted Lloyd Goodrich's essay on Winslow Homer, mentioning that Homer waited two years for a recurrence of the weather conditions he needed for a particular painting. I'm beginning to understand that mentality. Light, shadows, sun, wind, clouds, and haze, combine to form complex patterns that are often difficult to duplicate. And flora has its own cycle of leaves, blossoms, color, ripening, and decay.
So here I am waiting! Last winter I shot several photos of rose-hips on their barren bushes. In the summer, I started manipulating the best one to use in a quilt. My thought was to print it on cotton and organza in various sizes, and overlay with a fused applique of the main elements of the photo. But as I got into playing with the image, I realized that the backgrounds were too complex to easily rework, and that I should really take new shots that were more rigidly controlled.
In October, I walked out to the island with my camera, all ready to start shooting. Alas, the bushes were still covered with leaves! Pretty, yellow leaves, to be sure, but that wasn't what I wanted for this piece. So I waited... Now I'm excited to get up to Clark Island at Christmas, and hoping that conditions will be right and I'll get the perfect lighting. I may have to move branches around to get the right composition, but if all the details come together, I'll have the image I've been waiting for to start the first quilt project for 2010.
0 comments:
Post a Comment