As you might spot, I'm in full flow at the moment getting my backlog of projects finished!
This is my piece in response to the Favourite Book theme. Just after this topic was drawn, I was up in London for a few days and went to a wonderful exhibition of Paul Klee's work at the Tate Modern. I don't always fork out and buy an exhibition catalogue but this was such a fantastic exhibition I had to treat myself - and it definitely became my favourite book of the moment!
I found so much to inspire me at this exhibition that it was hard to decide what textile work to develop. Klee's repeatedly worked with what his critics called "magic squares" although they were rarely square but usually hand drawn shapes. He was also very interested in colour sequences and what he called 'gradations', and this was the subject of much of his colour theory teaching at the Bauhaus. Another aspect of his work that I thought would translate to textile work was his interest in repeating doodled shapes that he often scratched into the painted surface.
In the end I decided to try to dye some fabrics and try to create my own 'gradations'. For the first time I tried the dyeing technique that I was taught at a recent workshop by Di Wells. Despite carefully following the notes she had given us that day, I wasn't quite sure what I was doing! I think using Dylon hand dyes meant my colours were softer than the colours we created at Di's workshop using Procion dyes. But you live and learn...and I decided to use the fabrics that I had I dyed.
I combined these hand dyed fabrics in a format similar to a piece of Klee's work that he called "Rhythmic landscape with trees" and I added some strips to the edges to allow me to incorporate some textured doodles in the borders.
So here is my "Homage to Paul Klee"!
Hope you enjoy, Chris
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