A Color Runs Through It

Our show A Color Runs Through It opened last Friday evening with a nicely attended reception. The other four artists in the show with me are Georgia French, Diane English, Deb Sorem and Paulette Landers.  Each of us worked mainly with a specific color.  Georgia picked yellow, Diane picked purple, Deb had green and Paulette chose red.  My color was blue.  We also could use the color directly across the color wheel from our chosen color, plus black and white.  For me, that meant orange.  The image above is the third piece I made in the series and I called it Canyonlands.

Since I was supposed to be working mainly with blue, I thought Canyonlands leaned a little too far toward the orange shades.  So, I made this next piece called Moonrise.  Orange takes more of a back seat in this piece even though the moon itself is the focal point of the piece.  From a distance it does read blue.

My last piece in this series is Winter Solstice.  I love working with snow scenes.  It always makes me feel calm in the way that the world becomes hushed and quiet when a layer of fresh snow absorbs all sounds.  I like to experience the feel of the cold in the scene while working all snug and warm in my studio.

Here are some detail shots of the three quilts pictures above.

In my next post I will post pictures of the 5 smaller pieces I made at the gallery's request.  I am also going back to the gallery to take some pictures of the whole show.  I was so busy chatting at the opening, I forgot to take any pictures that evening!

Coming Back to Earth

Well, moving sure took it's toll on my blogging.  I see I haven't posted since May which was about the time our house went on the market.  It has been a whirlwind ever since.  Believe it or not, things are actually looking calmer as the end of December approaches.

I have been working in the studio in spite of all the moving uproar, working hard!  I am part of a show at the Maude Kerns Art Center in Eugene for the month of January with a group of five art quilters.  We each chose a main color to work with in all our pieces.  From that we were allowed to use the color across the color wheel from our chosen color and any neutral colors.  The kicker?  We each needed to provide five main quilts, plus five other pieces, which could be old work.  However, in my crazy head, I decided that even the additional five pieces needed to be new work. 

I chose the color Blue. That has meant working with Orange as well.  The piece pictured above is called Altitude.  It is a pretty obvious use of blue and orange.  A second piece, below, is a more subtle rendition of that color combination.  I called this one Fallow Fields. The five main pieces each measure 24" wide by 30" high.

Here is a small detail of the larger piece.  I had not yet finished the hand stitched rain lines when this was taken but I think you can see where I'm going. 

Next post will show more pieces.  I am currently working on #8.  

 Boy, it feels good to be "back"!