Continuing Ispiration

I know I have shown this picture of Ebey's prairie, located on Whidbey Island in the State of Washington, before but I am surprised by how many times I have come back to it for inspiration.  Mostly I have greatly simplified the image as in this 8 x 8 inch piece titled Prairie III.

Most recently, I decided to really delve into more of the details of the photo. I knew perspective would be critical so the angles of the field lines would be crucial.  I might tweak these a bit if I did it over again but this newest work seems to have captured the feeling of spaciousness that I get from looking at the original photo.  This is now my fourth piece that has come from just this one picture, Prairie IV.

 

Here is a detail image.  I have found that I really love stitching the foreground grasses with their grace and illusion of movement from the breeze.  One lucky break was the blue sky fabric. I had only one small piece left of this and it had lighter areas that ran vertical to way I needed to lay the piece.  Normally I would have wanted the light are to run horizontally but somehow this vertical "stripe" matched up perfectly with the open view to the distant ocean.  I had not enough fabric to move it right or left and still fit into my 12 x 12 inch space.  Sometimes there is inspiration and sometimes there is sheer luck!

New/Old Work

Prairie II

The end of 2015 brought me to a new job - in retail work.  The months have flown by since I last posted, while I got "trained up" and went through the holidays.  However, my art work did not lie idle. In December and January I had the honor of being in the Small Pleasures Invitational at the Jacobs Gallery in Eugene, Oregon.  All works had to be no larger than 12" in any one direction.  Prairie II was one of my pieces.  It was inspired by a photograph I took at a place called Ebey's Prairie on Whidbey Island off the coast of Washington.  Below is the original photograph.  I think you can see that I greatly simplified the scene.  The good thing about it is that I can come back to this photo again for future ideas.

 

Prairie I was also part of the Small Pleasures show.   Although this is a marshy scene it is actually a place in what we call Central Oregon, an environment that is considered high plateau desert.  Yes, that's right, Oregon has a vast area that is considered a desert ecosystem.  Although the landscape can be very stark, it has a beauty that can grab my heart.  I have always loved great wide open spaces with an unobstructed view of the sky.

Prairie I

I tried my hand at being a little more abstract in Shangri-La. Moving more toward the abstract has been a struggle for me.  I get caught up in the details too easily.  Often I start with a fairly abstract design as I build my background but then the stitching detail takes me back down the path of life-like representation.  In Prairie I, however, I think it is the detail stitching that makes the piece really shine.  In Shangri-La I was able to hold back a little better. So, the battle of personal style continues.