Four New Hooked Wool Drawings

2015 #12, hand dyed wool and egg tempera on linen, 19 x 16 in. 

My ideas for textiles begin as pencil doodles––or, to be more serious, thumbnail sketches––on sheets of typing paper. When I'm ready to make new textile work, I look through the sketches for ideas that look promising; I then add color with watercolor or gouache. The colors I choose for the sketch aren't  necessarily what I'll end up with: for my hooked wool drawings, I usually use some of the huge pile of many colors of dyed wool left over from previous projects. For #12, finding a large piece of yellow wool helped determine its colors. With this piece I wanted to reverse the usual order of visual weight: instead of getting lighter as the forms go back in space, I made them heavier by using wool; the lightest, highest form is paint.

2015 #12 detail

Here's a detail of the differing textures, from paint, to a line of hooked wool, and then to a hooked shape.

2015 #13, hand dyed wool and egg tempera on linen, 17 1/2 x 15

The idea for #13 began with two overlapping ovals, which I then connected at the top with a curved line. When I look at it now, I don't see the ovals at first because the colored areas, of green paint and blue wool, grab my attention. 

2015 #14, hand dyed wool and egg tempera on linen, 13 3/4 x 17 1/4 in.

For this piece, I thought about how I could vary a line of circles: change sizes, colors, positions, textures. The result is a kind of a "follow the bouncing ball".

2015 #15, hand dyed wool and egg tempera on linen, 15 x 12 in. 

Finally, more circles: a curve at top, then two circles of lighter reds, with a solidly hooked light red at their center; a painted shape at top, circles floating on a light ground. If I see a theme that connects these four works, it's repeating rhythms.