New Hooked Wool Drawings

2013 #20, hand dyed wool and egg tempera on linen; 2 panels, each 12 x 8 in.

Every once in a while I'm tempted to make a work using a somewhat silly color and try to make it a little serious. Remember that ridiculously named color in a box of Crayolas, "flesh"? Well, this is a similar warm pink that I thought I'd use for the background color in this diptych. I kinda like how it turned out, with the lines and shapes of blue and green contrasting with the pink, giving it a hazy quality, as of a misty morning sunrise.  

2013 #20, panel 1

2013 #20, panel 2

You can see more of the detail of the piece in the photos of each panel. Like my previous diptychs, this work has curves flowing across the gap, but here there are also straight lines. 

2013 #21, hand dyed wool and egg tempera on linen, 17 x 14 1/2 in.

As of now I have three basic formats for my hooked wool drawings: a centered image, such as in #21, an image filling the entire surface, as below in #22, and the most recent addition of diptychs as above in #20. Each format brings a different kind of expression and form and I enjoy working with them all, so during this session I did one of each. In #21 ovals are nestled within an egg-shaped oval, tilting toward each other. I hope this image isn't too sentimental; egg shapes can be very tricky.

2013 #22, hand dyed wool and egg tempera on linen, 15 x 12 in.

I thought it would be interesting to cut off the triangle rather than include the entire form; maybe it has more energy that way: regular forms, not quite regular; empty but for the overlap. In these hooked wool drawings I enjoy the variation of paint surface and its difference from the hooked wool texture and color, a playful intersection of mediums.