August 13, 2013

New Hooked Wool Drawings


2013 #14, hand dyed wool and egg tempera on linen, 15 x 12 in.


Sometimes I feel that with all the words I've written about my work that I just have no more to say....but there's always something. While working on this new group I was thinking how much I enjoy the newer series of compositions that engage the entire surface of the rectangle.


2013 #15, hand dyed wool and egg tempera on linen, 15 x 15 in.


It's not that I don't like these central images that I've worked with for the past three or four years...


2013 #16, hand dyed wool and egg tempera on linen, 15 x 12 in.


...it's just that the geometries of working the entire surface become very interesting to me, and the pieces have more presence.


2013 #17, hand dyed wool and egg tempera on linen, 15 x 16 1/2 in. 


And yet, there's something appealing about the more modest sized image, floating in a field, as though a bit vulnerable. 




Here are the four new pieces hanging in my work room, seen before I cut the borders down to the proper size. This gives you an idea of their sizes relative to one another. Hanging with them is a print I made from a photograph of a Tantric drawing in the book Tantra Song, which I wrote about here. I love looking at that print; it touches something deep, and it reminds me to try to be calm and peaceful and happy.

4 comments:

  1. Your works look calm, peaceful, and in some cases quite cheerful! In your paintings of machines, you are painting what you see (with editing of course); but I guess in these works, you are representing what you want to see, or feel?
    I especially enjoy, today, the black and red one with the divided rectangles that are coupled in their triangles.
    Thanks for yet another inspiring post, Altoon.

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    Replies
    1. Thank you, Ravenna, for your praise and your question. My paintings aren't quite what I see, since they are filtered by a lens, by my aesthetic sense of composition, by my memory of light and color since I'm not standing in front of the motif. They are inspired by things in the world, while the other work comes from my interest in the formal aspects of art: color,shape, the spaces between things, and yes...how all of it makes me feel.

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