Subtle changes

“My soul is impatient with itself,
as with a bothersome child;
its restlessness keeps growing
and is forever the same.
Everything interests me,
but nothing holds me.”
~ Fernando Pessoa

I've added a few more details to the stitching. Subtle changes which pull it together a bit, so that it could potentially stand alone, or work as part of a larger piece.


I'm ready to move on, for now. Although I'm not sure what I'll be doing next. Something different, or maybe just subtly different. I'm taking a bit of serious quiet time to try to figure out where I go from here.

“Without great solitude,
no serious work is possible.”
~ Pablo Picasso
(both quotes found on tumblr)

P.S. I'm also still working on getting my online "stuff" in order, so if I disappear from here or there, it will only be temporary. In case you don't know what I'm referring to, I explained it at the end of my last post. 'Til then!

Contrast

"No bird soars too high
if he soars with his own wings."
~ William Blake

The two flower petals have now become bird/petals. I love the texture of these stitches.


While I really like monochromatic art, I never seem content to create something myself without adding some stark contrasts. I love how the deep purple is making the yellow pop, and vice versa.

"Contrast warm to cool.
Make color sing,
ring like a bell.
Work from big to small."
~ Sergei Bongart

The dense scattering of the contrasting French knots, among the simpler seed stitches, back stitches, and running stitches is adding lovely texture, too.

I am learning a lot about my use of color by doing these stitches, things I never noticed before when I was painting or drawing. Stitching is so much slower and more deliberate, you notice how each stitch affects the appearance of the one next to it. It reminds me of the ripples our own actions cause, and how the simplest thing we do or say can impact someone else.

"Without contraries is no progression.
Attraction and repulsion,
reason and energy,
love and hate,
are necessary to human existence."
~ William Blake

And please note: I've been trying to do some online Spring cleaning. It turns out that I am too interested in too many things. Hahaha! As if that's even possible! On Blogger, I am following approximately 900 blogs. I can no longer use my Blogger dashboard to manage what I follow, since it can only handle up to 300 blogs. It's been causing me nothing but headaches to try to get this under control. I can't delete inactive blogs, blogs without a followers' widget, blogs that have totally changed focus, etc., etc. using my dashboard, until I get under that 300 point.

If I temporarily disappear from your followers list, don't worry. I'm following you another way until I can get this all taken care of, and so that I can access the dashboard again.

I've got the same situation with Facebook and tumblr, too. There is just too much interesting stuff out there on the web!

“...I have always lived on contrasts!
To me the only death is monotony.
Beware of monotony;
it's the mother of all the deadly sins.”
~ Edith Wharton

Back on track

I've begun to stitch beyond the muslin onto the recycled denim, and I love how it's all coming together.  Several people have referred to all of my recent stitching as a meditation, and it really is.

It's much easier to relax and be creative when I'm simply enjoying the process, rather than thinking about how I want the finished project to look.  I'm not even sure if this will ever become anything more than it already is.  Recycled cloth, paint and stitches.  It's enough for now.  It's helping me get back on track in a number of ways. 

Jacky mentioned in her comment on my past post, how some of the petal outlines reminded her of birds.  Yes. I see it too, and I like the idea of working some birds into this.

The lack of space to create, and to store what I've created, continues to challenge me.  But we all have challenges, this one just happens to be mine.  In the greater scheme of things, it's a small challenge.  Maybe it just means that I am not ready to work on the large canvases I want to work on.  This seems to be my time to focus on working on smaller canvases, on paper and on cloth.

That's not so bad.

Thank you all so much for your kind comments to my last posts.  Beau has had some much better days lately.  I have mixed feelings about medicating animals, but the addition of the daily pain pills seems to be helping him for now.  So we will take each good day with gratitude.

It feels great to be back on track with art, and blogging, and life in general.  It might be a different track, but a different track might be just what I need.

The good, the bad, and the ugly

 The good - I'm finding such joy in picking up the needle to stitch whenever I have a few moments!  "They" say not to stitch too much on muslin, since it puckers easily, but I'm finding the roughness of the stitched muslin very appealing.  Beginnings can be rough, after all.  When I began to stitch, I thought this would be a very simple piece, with very little stitching, but it's not turning out that way.  In fact, I think this is the beginning of something much larger, although I don't know what that is yet.

These two paintings sold recently!  I'm very grateful to all who were involved in the sale.




                                                                                               

The bad - We had to take our old Beau-doggy to the vet last week, after a pretty rough week for him.  It turns out that, in addition to the arthritis we knew he had, he also has dementia, cataracts, more bladder stones, possible epilepsy, and worst of all - a fairly large tumor on his spleen.

We have been through three surgeries with him, and he is no longer a candidate for surgery, so at this point we will never know if the tumor is cancer. It doesn't really matter anymore.  Thanks to daily doses of medication and pain pills, he is comfortable and still finding joyful moments in his day.  It's a daily vigil, though, to check his gums for signs of internal bleeding from the tumor.  We are taking it day-by-day.  Every day together is a blessing.  And when his time does come, we will work with our wonderful vet to make his final moments as comfortable as possible.

The ugly -  This part is something I really didn't want to write about, but it is finally time.  I have been blogging since October 2008, and for the most part it has been a real joy meeting people and forming genuine bonds with quite a few very special people.

However, four times during this period I have been the target of bullying, threats and criticism, if I did not do what someone wanted me to do, in the way they wanted me to do it.  And, frankly, I'm tired of it.  I have a life beyond what I share here, and that life is my priority.  I know most of you will obviously understand this, but apparently there are some who do not realize that they have no right to make any demands on me.

Enough said.  Onward, to better and more positive things!

"There are better things ahead

than any we left behind."

~ C.S. Lewis