Here at last is my response to the theme of architectural structure…its not exactly every house I ever lived in: starting top left, the top row are the houses I lived in as child, then in reality there was a big gap when I was a student and living in shared houses in London, but from London 1976 around in a clockwise direction are all the houses I have owned (or part owned) as an adult!
The final image is the house in Falmouth that Robin and I bought two years ago on our return to Cornwall. That's why it has pride of place in the composition - and why I have left it less embroidered than the rest… I'm expecting there are still plenty of colourful experiences to have in this house!
I worked on quite coarse canvas. After drawing the outline images by machine from the back, I then added some flat colour with acrylic paints, before adding final details with free machine embroidery. The idea to fray the edges came to me as I was working - I think using the canvas stirred up memories of some table mats we made at school that were block printed and then frayed like this, so it seemed quite appropriate to use a childhood technique! I was rather disappointed in the clumsy effect of my machine embroidered writing of the towns and dates but decided to keep them and use this as a learning experience. (Coarse textured canvas doesn't hold fine details very well - and don't forget to use your hoop!)
Yours, Chris
No comments:
Post a Comment