Shapes and marks

And you find only the shape you already are but what if you have forgotten that or discover that you have never known.  

Margaret Atwood. (Looking in a mirror, the Journals of Susannah Moodie) 
 

Beautiful Soul

 If we say anything original, we so often say it wrong and we will offend and hurt others.  On the internet this can be exhausting.  I must still get the work out, get the words out, get the stitches into the cloth.  

Remember the Beautiful Soul.  The dream of the beautiful soul brought into the real world that can carry us forward.  

All we have is our best idea.  

Sarah Gagnon. Pelican Quilts 

the mothers

to create stitched artwork, the first step is wounding, piercing.  

Worry Last

Using my work as a way to not worry.  

Don’t worry first.  Worry last.  

Make work.  Make more work.  Then worry about if and how they fit together.  

the cloud within me

A path that is more about all the days of my life that I’ve stepped around and through, all the hurdles and the burdens, all the joys and unexpected visions of my life.  2016 journal
 

Feminine Readers

 Feminine writing is for the feminine reader. 

A feminine reader studies a collection of texts that deal with fundamental issues of existence in ways that question our perception of ourselves and others.  They want to create a better life.  

Helene Cixous writes for the feminine reader.   

Susan Sellers editor of the Helene Cixous Reader

walking away, swaying

 artistic experience folded into the textile like dough

Working on the reverse side of endless horizons, using shape as much as line, using space as a place to enter.  

Maybe I won't

Why do I feel that it is necessary to disrupt the calm with these strange bold shapes?

The Other Side of Self

Joyce Wieland used The Speaking Mouth.

Mouth as connector, erotic orifice, instrument of intelligence.

drawing with applique

The mark on a painting.

How that mark affects the space around it.  The space may lean into the mark.  Or the mark may lean into the space.  Or gravity pulls the space into the mark.

You need to go into that place of risk where you're not quite sure what's going to happen.  You have to push things into that fragile, vulnerable space between the mark and the surrounding space.  Get into that place where you don't know what's going to happen.  It's very difficult.

It takes its toll.   

Barbara Monk Feldman - composer

Mattawa memory

I'm so glad I met you.

Everything I need

 

"I watched a film of Cezanne painting.  Back and forth in a triangular relationship between the painter, the subject, the painitng.  Morandi did also - he was painting his jars - always in a triangle though.  When I paint, I look at the canvas ont he wall and I paint it.  I move back and forth between my seat and the painting in a straight line , between me and the work.  The painting being the subject and the object all in one.
There is no triangle.
Everything I need to make the painting is in me when I start."  Sean Scully 2016

creativity is a habit

 

Wolfgang's first good fortune was to have a father who was a composer and a virtuoso and recognized ability in his son. 
Nobody worked harder than Mozart.
"People err who think my art comes easily to me.  I assure you, dear friend, nobody has devoted so much time and thought to composition as I"  W.A. Mozart

His so-called genius, his discipline and work ethic were its equal.    Twyla Tharp

apparently endless

a warm quilt of art is pulled over the world

this is not a hobby for you

 

'you have such integrity in your work'
'you have got to guard against your desire to take eveyrthing to such high standard'
'there is no point in being academically ambitious if you become creatively sterile'
'nurture your creativity with things like your family life.  You need to"

Joan Richardson 2011
phone call conversation with my tutor during my degree work from Opus School of Textile art, Middlesex University UK, (notes from my journal of that time)

forget about the bad

you are protected if you are soft
you are gentle when you are calm
you are calm when you are healthy

ancient chinese teaching

multiple horizons

I believe I know the only cure which is to make one's center of life inside one's self, not selfishly or excludingly, but with a kind of unassailable serenity - to decorate one's inner house so richly that one is content there, glad to welcome anyone to come and stay, but happy all the same in the hours when one is inevitably alone.
Edith Wharton

now

 

starting a new piece