I have been painting some scarves for the Cleveland Museum of Art to compliment the William Morris exhibition that opened in October 2017. This one is inspired by the trellis motif that occurs in many of the Morris factory designs.
On January 5, 2016, the exhibition titled “Painting the Modern Garden: Monet to Matisse,” ended its run at the Cleveland Museum of Art. It will be shown next at the Royal Academy of Arts, London (January 30 to April 20). The exhibit, for which Susan painted a number of “inspired by pieces” for the museum shop, was an outstanding success for the CMA.
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April 8, 2013
An interesting weekend of painting. I wanted to see if I could create drawn lines on the silk that would retain the black dye while “erasing” the edges. I used a combination of applying dye to get some pigment on the silk and alcohol to move that tone around. It reminds me of working with charcoal. The exciting part was that I had set out to paint a scarf for someone and had an image of it in my minds eye. The image required me to figure out some new methods. I love and hate to work not knowing what to do next. Once it started rolling the intuitive process came alive. Below is a detail of
June 5, 2012 I have been hatching a plan for some wall pieces. I’d like to do a show called “Off the Neck”. My thoughts have evolved along these lines because when I do a scarf I am influenced by time constraints. On the one hand painting is painting and I do not stint on my attention or care depending on the purpose of the piece I am working on. But I do not allow myself to spend “whatever it takes” if I know it is a scarf as I could end up with too many thousand dollar scarves. So I am looking for a better balance to my work life and suspect that will involve more pieces for the wall. I love playing in my mind what these will look like. I painted a piece for my son’s graduation from college that I think might be a jumping off point. I used the qigong colors and imagery for that small square and got excited about how it would look bigger and perhaps with either a figurative image or what I’ll call a story floral.