Exhibition and a marsh walk

November 29, 2015

A day off from studio work yesterday to deliver work to Bircham Gallery for their Christmas Exhibition. If you are in Norfolk, the exhibition runs from 5 December until 13 January and you can see my work alongside that of several other gallery artists. The above image is of a piece called Transient, which is a favourite of mine.

Of course we could not go all that way without heading out for a walk across the marshes. After some brief sunshine first thing in the morning it was grey and cold with a wind from the north-west, that grew stronger and wetter as the afternoon wore on. We started from Morston and headed west across the marsh along the southern edge of the Blakeney Channel. It was low tide and I love seeing the channel exposed with most of the water drained out of it. There was fresh seaweed and other debris strewn along the edge to remind us that the ground we walked on could be underwater again in a few hours.

But in the meantime there is this bleakly beautiful landscape spread out between the edge of the marsh and Blakeney Point in the distance. Brent geese, curlews, redshanks, gulls pick their way over the surface looking for food. The surface changes between mud, shingle, sand creating changes in colour and texture across the surface. And the creeks reflect the light, silver grey, twisting their way towards the channel.

Morston Blakeney Channel 02 2015 Helen Terry.jpg

Morston Blakeney Channel 03 2015 Helen Terry.jpg

Morston Blakeney Channel 04 2015 Helen Terry.jpg

Morston Blakeney Channel 2015 Helen Terry.jpg

Setback

November 8, 2015

Setback. Noun. A reversal or check in progress, relapse, placing (of project) farther back in space or time than it might have been. Synonyms: problem, difficulty, hitch, issue, disappointment, complication ...

I had 15 silk screens prepared and have been printing and processing them a few at a time. I processed the first set and the results were ... disappointing, lacklustre, uninspiring. The colours were boring and the print quality was poor.

In retrospect I had taken rather a lot of chances with these prints, without testing things out first. Since I was repeating techniques I had tried earlier this year I thought I knew what would happen. Never think you already know what will happen with dye if you change the cloth, colour, value, and especially all three at once!

Frustrated. Cross. And interesting how it brought out all my self doubt too. None of which is terribly helpful of course. So I walked away and did something else for a while. Then armed myself with a cup of tea, pinned everything up and had a closer look. I wrote a little rant in my sketchbook about everything I did not like ... but then started to work out what had actually gone wrong and what I could do about it. My main concern was the screens I still had left to print rather than salvaging these prints (I can always over-print or over-dye those).

There were some things I couldn't change, at least not without totally undoing hours of preparation. But there were a couple of things I could do something about that might be enough to improve the next set of screen prints. Fingers crossed, so far these look much more promising.

Ambiguous edges

October 25, 2015

I had spent ages mixing a palette of dye colours only to feel that the results were not what I wanted. I seriously considered discarding them and starting again. Fortunately I couldn't bring myself to throw away all that work - or waste the dye. So, I spent another couple of hours painting the dyes onto cloth. In an "I don't really care what happens here" frame of mind. Then leaving the dyed cloth to cure overnight. And finally several more hours of rinsing out and processing. All with fairly modest expectations of what I might get ... although increasingly more encouraged. Then I laid out the results on my studio table.

A dance-around-the-studio moment.

The photos could be sharper and the colours are not quite accurate (the camera struggled with these colours under artificial light), but never mind. It's the edges I am most pleased about. Looking at the photographs, I particularly like the way you can't readily distinguish the real edges of the cloth from the painted ones. I spent some time, moving pieces around, overlapping them in different ways, considering the possibilities.

Found marks and ambiguity

October 12, 2015

A visit to the RHS garden at Hyde Hall this weekend. While everyone else was admiring views through the gardens, autumn flowers or leaves, I was peering at tree trunks. I was drawn to the variety of marks and patterns on the bark of the birches in particular. The lines suggest stitches. Or signal traces - morse code, electronic pulses. There's just enough suggestion of some kind of order without repetition. The way the lines were interrupted or changed by other marks - lichen, cracks or scars - also interested me.

Something I have been reading:

“There is a human need to make sense from the random confusion of the world, to process our perceptions as we experience them, and to structure them as best we can. ... vision is an active process in which the brain attempts to make sense of the information it receives from the eyes. ”

— Derek Horton, Introduction "Drawing Ambiguity" (2015)

Exploring this process of perception and interpretation is at the heart of what I like to do. But at the same time I think marks and imagery are more interesting if they never quite resolve themselves but remain somewhat unexplained. Ambiguity leaves room for a wider range of interpretation. As soon as they resolve themselves into something definite it closes off some of the possible layers of meaning - which is far less engaging in my view.

“Ambiguity is a property of the interpretative relationship between people and things or ideas (or representations of them). ... In other words, things and ideas are not inherently ambiguous; rather, ambiguity arises in their interpretation.”

— Derek Horton, as before

The interpretation placed upon marks or images relates as much to the observer's own experience and concerns as anything in the imagery itself. I may have certain intentions for my work but am sometimes surprised by the things other people see. This is both rewarding and challenging. In some ways it is more challenging when I am working with marks that are less abstract. I like to retain that tension where the observer is not quite certain how to interpret the imagery. But the opposite problem is avoiding the kind of wilful obscurity or mystification that is merely annoying:

“... ambiguity’s value is determined by the quality of interpretation and the meaning that is derived from it. Ambiguity is not a virtue in itself and it can end up being merely confusing, frustrating or meaningless”

— Derek Horton, as before

Plenty to think about while I develop and refine the pieces I'm working on in the studio.

Two Tree Island 25 September Helen Terry

Watching the tide turn

September 25, 2015

My previous visit to Two Tree Island a few weeks ago was at low tide, when all the mud was exposed. It was a damp, cool day and everything was grey and green. Revisiting the island today just after high tide, in glorious sunshine, it was all pale blue, grey and silver.

When I arrived the channel was full of water and I walked down the slipway to the water's edge and spent some time looking up and down the river. It is a long slipway and standing at the end, with the water lapping my boots, I could almost trick myself into a sense that I was standing in - or even on - the middle of the river. The water was mirroring the sky but was clear enough that at the same time I could see the bottom and the fish moving within it.

After a few minutes I turned around and was amazed at how much had changed behind me while my back was turned to the island. The edge of the island was emerging from the water, but not all at once. The mud is shaped by the waves into ripples, a simulacrum of the surface of the water itself. What I could see were the crests of these mud-waves which, as they emerged (to my eye), took the form of sinuous hieroglyphs while the water twisted and snaked between them.

As I watched, the relationship between solid and fluid was changing so fast that I almost couldn't see it happening. Positive and negative shapes enlarging and shrinking and shifting before my eyes. I mean, if I focused on a particular point of course I could see the mud emerge as the water receded. But everything was so mobile, the water, the reflections, the light; and as I gazed at the surface, there was simply a general impression of everything changing and moving moment by moment.

I like these ambiguities.

On the wall

September 20, 2015

Having spent weeks finishing pieces for the exhibition in Knebworth, it has been quite difficult to get back to developing new work. I moved furniture around; made cushions (at least that involved cloth); hung pictures; rearranged books ... productive, but displacement activity nonetheless.

At the end of last week, I took advantage of a day at the Committed to Cloth studio to spread things out. Sometimes it is really helpful to just pin everything on the wall, step back and look at what I have. The bigger the wall, and the further back I can get, the better.

I pinned up drawings, photographs and samples, some of which I hadn't looked at for weeks. Then I started to pull out pieces of dyed and painted cloth, looking for echoes - colours and marks that seemed to relate to what I wanted. Trying things out. Eliminating some options - developing others. Some of the accidental combinations that occur as I spread things out on the table generate ideas in themselves.

What works in my head doesn't always look so good in reality. Some of my initial ideas collapsed all too swiftly when put to the test. Frustrating ... but that's the value of doing this. After a few hours of moving things around, I had a stronger sense of what would work. And a list of things to do next.

Green and Grey

September 6, 2015

I have been doing lots of walking. In North Norfolk and closer to home in Essex. August was unusually dull and wet but there were still a few bright sunny days. But now, as summer shifts into autumn, the first mists have appeared ... and lots of rain.

Wet weather strengthens the greens in the landscape. Brilliant greens against all shades of grey. Walking through the pine woods at Holkham, the pouring rain turned the moss an almost lurid emerald. On another day at Cley, mists veiled the ridge behind the marsh, muting all the colours in the background - blue-greys, green-greys.

Back at home, two days ago, we went for a walk around Two Tree Island. A nature reserve, the island is tiny and sits in the Thames Estuary between Leigh on Sea and Canvey Island. Saltmarsh and mud flats edge its northern shore where it runs into the estuary. The skies were pale, animated by banks of heavy cloud - greys tinged with blue and even violet.

Observing the transition between silver water, grey shining mud and the grey-greens of the salt marsh. All kinds of edges.

Exhibition and other news

September 2, 2015

I raced back from North Norfolk yesterday to set up the exhibition with Clive Barnett at Art Van Go in Knebworth, Hertfordshire. I am delighted to be showing some new work alongside Clive, who shares my interest in mark-making.

Lines and Edges Clive Barnett Helen Terry

The exhibition runs from 2 to 19 September.

Secondly, I was honoured when Maggie Grey asked me to write an article for Workshop on the Web about my daily mark-making practice. This has now been published in September's edition (subscription needed).

A daily practice - part four

August 14, 2015

In the studio, I am still stitching. I took some finished pieces to the framers this morning and am now finishing off some smaller ones that I think I will show unframed. This is all for the exhibition with Clive Barnett at Art Van Go that starts 2 September. I've pinned everything up on the studio wall to decide what goes in ... and what doesn't - and to choose titles for the ones still unnamed. It is all hard work - and there's lots of associated admin, none of which makes for a particularly interesting blog post.

However, I have not shared the details of the last round of mark-making / drawing, so ...

This was the fourth round of forty days of daily mark-making. In fact it was forty-two days and finished at the end of July. I've only just got round to sorting through the photos. This time I had decided it would be interesting to work on loose sheets of paper, which is what I would normally prefer to do anyway. But, having worked in a sketchbook for the previous 120 days plus, I found it surprisingly difficult to get going. Despite the increased freedom, for the first week or so I could only manage my minimum one page a day.

There's something about working in these blocs of forty days - each develops its own rhythm or character. And each time, there's been a period of adjustment at the beginning - uncertainty about what to do, having to find new strategies for working. And at the end, I have sometimes felt that it was becoming predictable, routine, that I was just repeating myself. It's curious and I wonder whether it would be the same if I had committed to a continuous practice rather than a time-limited one.

I value activities that put me in a position where I don't quite know what I'm doing. So this period of adjustment each time is not a bad thing in my view. The difficulty is a sign that I'm having to find my way and learn something afresh. I actually prefer this to feeling that it is too easy, automatic and I am not having to think.

The value of this practice (for me, I don't know about others) is the engagement with the process and the materials. This is more important than the quality of whatever results. I think what I'm looking for is the development: changes in the kind of marks, the ways of organising them, finding different methods for making them, effects I haven't seen before.

So, what happened in the end, once I got through this awkward adjustment phase, was that I found myself alternating between two contrasting strategies. The first was that I took full advantage of the loose sheet to manipulate the page: folding, crumpling, rubbing, scratching and piercing the surface. It was more of a collage approach - and sometimes I layered two pages together, making holes in one so you could see through to the next. It was quite intensive and I usually worked on no more than two pages at a time or even worked into a page over two days.

The second strategy was to do a series of ten (or more) pages, working quite quickly with the same media (mostly ink) and a similar theme. This led to series of very similar looking pages but I found it very informative. It was an excellent way of trying different combinations or layers of marks - variations on a theme.

Since the end of this fourth round, I have accidentally taken a break. Accidentally, because I didn't actually decide to do so in advance. The immediate cause was first, that I went away for a few days; second, that I hadn't prepared either paper or sketchbook for the next round, which just proves how important it is to do this if I want to keep going, in my case at least. The secondary cause is that I'm in two minds what to do next with this. I do feel that my mark-making is becoming a little too repetitive for my taste. I could just carry on and work with that, keep pushing things on until there's a breakthrough. But I'm also thinking it might be valuable to spend some time on more observational drawing to train myself to make new marks / combinations of marks. But then that would be a decisive shift towards drawing rather than mark-making ...

So, while I'm working on finishing the final pieces for exhibition, I'm allowing myself a break to figure out which approach would serve me best. ... And if I fail to make up my mind, I shall just start anyway and see what happens ... once this exhibition is up and running that is.

Boro: the fabric of life

August 3, 2015

I travelled to Cologne for the day on Friday to see an exhibition of Boro textiles. This was the same exhibition that was first shown at the Domaine de Boisbuchet in 2013.

First, a word about the photos. The museum allowed photographs provided I did not use flash. Since the textiles were displayed in low light this compromised quality. These images are the clearest I could manage ... with some significant editing to improve sharpness and clarity. Sometimes this is at the expense of colour accuracy.

Some things I learned:

The museum made a link to kesa, robes pieced together by Buddhist monks from cloth they received as alms, originally rags. Ironically, since rich Buddhist followers would often donate precious textiles to show their devotion, kesa were sometimes made from rather splendid, embroidered silks. The exhibition included some gorgeous examples from the museum's own collection.
Japanese peasants originally wore cloth made from local bast fibres - hemp, ramie, mulberry, wisteria, nettle. The softer and warmer cotton became popular in the eighteenth century ... but was only available to the rich. Rural people bought used, damaged cotton clothing from itinerant rag merchants or traders and mended or re-used the cloth.
Sashiko is the term for the running stitch used either to mend cloth or to piece small pieces together into a larger cloth. Originally bast fibre was used. It was only once people gained access to softer, more pliable cotton threads (from the mid 19th century), that the decorative designs and patterns developed that we associate with the term sashiko.

Since I knew I was not going to get good photographs, I made lots of notes and rough drawings of the aspects that interested me. I was particularly interested in the variety of approaches to the stitching. There was no single approach, different examples showing the individual style and skill of the maker(s). Some pieces were so densely stitched that they looked woven, especially where the stitching was close and even. But then later repairs disrupted the original stitch pattern, creating interesting discrepancies. Another example was the complete opposite: the stitching was sparse - tiny stitches, widely spaced, creating a totally different rhythm.

The stitch lines commonly followed the outside edge of the patch and then traced a "square spiral" path into the middle. The most natural way to secure a square patch to a backing using a continuous thread with no stopping or backtracking. Some pieces were stitched with regular, closely spaced lines, others with more irregular, widely spaced lines. Idiosyncratic changes in direction as the stitcher had chosen their route around the cloth made interesting rhythmic patterns. I was struck by one piece where long, loose stitches followed convoluted paths across the patches for which there was no observable logic. Some looked like strange drawings ...

In many places stitches had worn away, leaving gaps in the stitch line or loose threads. Heavily patched areas created overlapping stitch lines that didn't always relate to the visible patch, revealing something about what was happening in the layers beneath it instead. This aspect really appeals to me.

More information:

My previous blog post about the Somerset House exhibition in 2014
Museum für Ostasiatische Kunst, Cologne
Domaine de Boisbuchet
Sri Threads - examples, with information, of boro textiles. Stephen Szczepanek co-curated this exhibition and provided many of the textiles from his private collection.

Close focus

July 19, 2015

Limited space and limited time mean I tend to focus on either one thing or another in my studio. It's hard to switch back and forth too quickly between screen-printing, dyeing or stitching. So although I have developed more monoprints since my last post, I was conscious how much I still needed to do to get work ready for exhibition in September. So I am back in stitch mode.

I joked to friends that I am "panic stitching"! An exaggeration, because in practice I have plenty of time, but there is that (rather helpful) sense of a looming deadline that is driving me to get the work done. I know I won't feel completely settled again until it is.

The stitching phase is so different from any other part of the process. It means spending hours at a time with a single piece of work, studying minute marks on the cloth and deciding stitch by stitch how to respond to those. I can be quite fidgety and so it can be hard to settle down at first. Listening to good music helps. Another tactic I've found is to set a timer for one hour and work until it goes off. All the usual distractions have to wait until then, by which time it's reasonable to have a short break anyway. In practice I've usually settled by then and am happy to keep going.

I'm stitching the largest pieces first so the task will get easier and progress faster as I go on. The first two are always the hardest as I work out my approach. False starts, trying things out, changing my mind, starting again until I'm happy it works.

In the meantime the experimentation hasn't completely stopped. I've reviewed and organised all my samples, pinned everything up on a wall to have a look and done some drawing. Plenty of time to think about all this while I stitch.

Resistance

June 21, 2015

Quite a lot of "resistance" - in Steven Pressfield terms - this past week. I have struggled to get into the studio and get going ... even though I had eleven screens ready to print. And then when I did start, I managed to make preparing cloth and mixing dye last a whole day!

I think in part this is a perverse response to the fact that things have been going well. I like the samples I've already printed so much as they are ... and yet I know they need something more. So there's been a subconscious reluctance to "meddle" with the process and just keep doing more of the same - play "safe" ... maybe just change scale.

The other factor I think is that this is quite a change in my process. Preparing and printing the screens involves making different kinds of decisions. And at an earlier stage in the process of producing cloth. I'm having to adjust to this.

And yet another factor is that I am unsure how I am going to work with these pieces. I love what's happening and know that this is a direction I want to pursue ... but I have no idea at this point how I will turn these into finished work. (And, yes, I do know I don't need to have the answers to that yet!)

I always draw comfort from Pressfield's assertion that if you're feeling resistance to doing something, you're getting somewhere. And the only useful response is to get back to work. I got my act together and printed over half the screens. I experimented with different kinds of cloth and started to bring in more colour and layer marks. The one above was printed on muslin with a plain cotton underneath. Well, it had to be tried but this was not one of the more successful, or most interesting, trials. I want to evaluate the results before I print the remaining screens, but it's looking promising. One thing that has helped has been to bring in elements from previous work. It's helping me to find my way in.

Not many images with this post. I'm wary of sharing too much when my ideas are at such a fragile stage. This is actually a good sign - it means I think I'm making progress.

Experimentation

June 6, 2015

Over the past few months I've been experimenting with different ways of making marks on cloth. While I love the linear marks I have been producing with shibori and other techniques, I don't want to just keep repeating myself. So I've been shaking things up.

I started by looking through my library of photographs and identifying certain qualities that interested me. I also collected images with similar qualities from the internet and elsewhere to expand my ideas about what I might do. Then I thought about ways I might achieve similar effects on cloth.

Since February, I've been engaged in an extended, on and off, process of experimenting - in between making new work for exhibition. There have been some outright failures. Dip-dye techniques are now crossed firmly off my list of possibilities. But there have also been some interesting beginnings.

I've deliberately investigated methods I tend not to use much. I generally avoid screen-printing because I'm not interested in repeating designs. But mixing screen-printing with drawing and mono-print techniques has led to some exciting results.

I also don't normally use screen inks. But I wondered what would happen if I used them to resist the dye ... and there were some surprises with interesting texture effects.

There is still loads to do. I need to solve some technical issues; refine techniques; think about colour; develop the marks and imagery ... and all just to develop an initial collection of different fabrics. Only then can I start to play around with ideas for new work.

In the meantime I carry on making work with my existing fabrics. Although In practice, some of my new ideas are starting to creep in anyway ...

Exhibitions and other news

May 21, 2015

I am delighted to be showing some new work in Bircham Gallery's Early Summer Exhibition. This is a mixed show which also features paintings by Anne Davies, Keith Roper, Tony Foster, Mhairi McGregor, Martin Laurance, Stephanie Stow and Sally Tyrie; and ceramics by Virginia Graham and Lowri Davies.

The exhibition runs from 23 May to 17 June. There is an online catalogue with details of all the artists and their work. You can see my page here.

I am also preparing for an exhibition from 2-19 September at Art Van Go in Knebworth, Hertfordshire. This will be a joint exhibition with Clive Barnett. Further details to follow.

Finally, I am very honoured that John Hopper of The Textile Blog chose to write about my work in Issue 4 of Inspirational magazine.

A daily practice - part three

May 10, 2015

Forty days of mark-making, round three. Although in fact I am on day 43, because I have several pages left in the sketchbook and want to fill it. This time I have focused on ways of changing the surface. Rounds one and two were dominated by drawn marks - additive marks. I wanted to make myself think about the surface itself more and experiment with subtractive marks and texture. Scratching, creasing, rubbing, crumpling, piercing, sanding, combinations of different media ... any way of creating visual or actual texture.

There have been some really bad pages - experiments that didn't work ... and couldn't be rescued. When I was tired sometimes all I could manage was a wash of ink over some wax crayon. But there have also been plenty of good or interesting pages. Some are impossible to photograph - all the camera can see is a plain, dark page, not the subtle texture or fragile marks. So the pages pictured here are just the ones that do photograph well.

I got excited about the possibilities of gluing different kinds of paper to the surface and painting over it. Different papers take the ink in different ways, just as different fibres react differently to dye. There were lots of ways to make interesting edges. I gathered up tissue papers, rice paper, pattern paper, packing paper, tracing paper, handmade papers, book pages and played around. I also played with masking tape and double-sided tape, applying tissue paper or rubbing graphite or crayon over the top.

The sketchbook is another handmade one with different kinds of paper in it. So every now and then I would turn the page to be faced with something challenging. Tracing paper. Or thin photocopy paper. I eventually learned to exploit their tendency to cockle and shrink when wet rather than fight it. But there were other types of paper I started to look forward to, such as a fine lokta paper that could be rubbed into holes when it was wet.

Dealing with the restrictions of working in a book has been part of the practice. Although I think it will be interesting to repeat this with loose sheets of paper. That would increase the range of things I could try too. I also still like the restriction of forty days. It is useful to have a focus. Whenever I find myself reverting to my default marks, I bring myself back to the idea of changing the surface in some way.

Although I consider this a mark-making practice, many pages are effectively drawings. I've wondered whether I should stop myself, concentrate more upon just making the marks. It is plain, looking back, that I have little interest in pattern making or repeating marks. In fact I am more often looking for ways to disrupt patterns or create interesting negative space. I also notice that I'm as interested in the surface and the impact this has on the look and feel of the marks. I think the important thing is to keep this exercise open and exploratory. Which means allowing myself to experiment with other design elements, if that is what draws my attention.

Sketchbook

April 28, 2015

I still have work to finish but in between I've been working in this sketchbook. I normally prefer to work on loose sheets of paper but I thought it would be interesting to work into a book for a change. So far I am finding it more restrictive but on the other hand I like seeing the lines of thought emerging.

The pages below are from last week. I'm just trying things out. Testing ideas, ways of looking at things. I've been working from photographs of estuaries and marshes, making quick drawings and collages. Then cropping some of these, or turning them round, to look at them in different ways.

I've also been playing with words. This helps me to find connections and associations that I don't necessarily get from the drawings.

I always have several sketchbooks or notebooks on the go. The two main ones are my journal, in which I reflect on things I've done, seen, read, heard. The other is my studio sketchbook, which contains technical notes, sketches and photos of work in progress, random ideas to try, dye calculations, lists and plans. These two are my working books. They are not pretty but they're the most important to me. Then there is my dye book, which contains swatches and records of all my colour experiments, and there is a shibori book, which records outcomes of various physical resist techniques. At the moment there is also my daily mark-making book - I'm now on the third of these.

Sometimes all these things can seem disconnected from each other but it's all research.

Stitch details

April 12, 2015

I have been immersed in stitching a group of new work. This involves hours of sitting closely with each piece, listening to music or iPlayer radio documentaries while I stitch. I made a decision with this group that hardly any of the stitched marks would be functional. The cloth is held together with invisible stitching and the visible stitches are there solely as marks. This gave me more freedom to play with the edges of the cloth. Sometimes, it looks as though the stitches are holding pieces together - but then they tail away or wander off somewhere else.

I also experimented with stitching from the back. While the results have some of the loose, erratic quality I like, I think I could have pushed this further. Too cautious this time.

Studio visit

April 6, 2015

I caught up with a friend this weekend who came to see me in my studio. Bronwyn happens to be a talented photographer ... and she brought her camera. It was fascinating to see the space through her eyes - I particularly liked some of the details she picked out:

My studio used to be our garage. It has no windows, just a door opening out into the garden. I have an inspiring view of one end of our hedge and not much else. No distractions! I have three main work areas - one for clean work (mainly stitching); one for wet work.

The third used to be for drawing, but that activity has now moved inside the house, so it is now general purpose ... but holds an ever-growing collection of found objects. These would take over if I let them ...

Every available space is used for storage - hand-built shelves and cupboards, plastic crates and Ikea. But I keep large areas of wall clear, covered with foam-core, to use as pin boards. I pin up work in progress, samples, photographs and drawings. There used to be a lot of images of other people's work for general inspiration, but I removed almost all of these. I prefer to have my own photographs - often cut up or edited - and drawings - so that the walls are now an extension of my sketchbook.

All the photos in this post are by Bronwyn Oldham. Bronwyn's own work focuses on flowers - but not as you might normally imagine them. She portrays them as they age and wither, when the petals take on new textures and colours; and flowers and leaves shrink or distort into new forms. She makes you see how they are just as beautiful like this, if not more so. I particularly like the way the petals and leaves seem more cloth-like as they age.

Unfinished work

March 31, 2015

This is my studio wall after a weekend of editing and revising work I thought I had finished.

On Friday I pulled out some unfinished work from last year, intending to finish them. Several pieces - they just needed a final layer of stitch. I pinned them all up on the wall alongside some finished pieces from the same group and stepped back.

There's something about coming back to your work and looking at it afresh after some time has passed. You see it more clearly. I didn't like the proportions of one piece ... but there was a way to fix that. I took it down, unpicked it, removed a border, straightened an edge, restitched. Pinned it back on the wall. There were two other pieces I now thought a little uninspiring. Another where something wasn't quite right. Decision time - leave them ... or ...

I took them down. I dug out the L Shaped pieces of card I use as "windows" and some strips of white cotton and started testing different formats and ways of cropping. I pulled out more cloth to try out different colours and marks. Better. I started cutting, tearing and pinning. I took pictures with my iPhone as I went (out of focus ... sorry). Photos are more objective - I can often see what isn't working in a photograph faster than just looking at the piece itself.

I was inspired to pull out two or three more pieces that I had never resolved - these had never even made it into the "ready for stitching" pile. Each one had a germ of an idea, I just hadn't made it work. In one, it was as though each end belonged to a different piece - and at one end it looked as though I had just kept adding more pieces to try and make it work. I cut it in two. Started removing pieces. Now the two sections didn't have to relate to each other it was much easier to see what needed to be done.

Another piece - a large one. The borders did nothing for the centre section and there was a touch of terracotta that didn't relate to anything. Plus the proportions and size were all wrong. I still liked the bit in the middle though. So I started removing the rest - stripping it back to essentials. I cropped the whole thing down. Paler borders. Plainer. Everything fell into place. Now it worked.

When I got stuck on one piece I switched to another. I kept stepping back and looking until I could see what I needed to do. I worked backwards and forwards like this all weekend. The downside is that I didn't "finish" any pieces of work, although I re-made six or seven. But it was so worthwhile. I am much happier with these.

A daily practice - part two

March 20, 2015

So immediately after I finished the first forty days of mark-making, I started a second. And since by the end of the first I was working almost exclusively with conté crayon, I decided to switch to ink - my favourite wet medium. I chose another home-made sketchbook - a larger one this time (8 inches square) but, like the first, filled with a mixture of different types of paper. Same principle as before - a minimum of one page a day, any mark. And so I began again.

Then ... frustration! Nothing I did seemed to work out. After becoming really comfortable with the conté crayon all I seemed to get now were ugly, splodgy marks and puddles of ink on the page. And there was another problem. I had to wait for the ink to dry before I could turn the page! So not only did I not like what was happening but I couldn't move on and try something else straightaway.

One of my favourite studio rules is that whatever it is I'm doing - dyeing, drawing, collage - I set out to do at least 10 variations of it. This is because I often find that it's the 7th, 8th and 9th variations that are actually the best - the things I hadn't even thought of when I started. I like to work quickly and encourage the ideas to keep flowing from one sample or drawing to the next. And that's how I had been working during the first forty days ... and now I couldn't.

By the evening of day two (note the extent of my patience!) I was on the verge of running down to the studio and cutting a pile of loose sheets of paper to work on instead of using a book. I talked myself out of it. Partly because it was late and I was tired. But mainly because I reflected that if this was how it was to be, that was going to be part of the practice and I needed to adjust to that. It would mean slowing down and being more deliberate. Taking more time to consider what was happening before moving on.

The first week was painful. I was interested in bleed effects but kept using too much ink or too much water. So my marks would start out looking gorgeous and then degenerate into a splodgy mess. Oh yes, and the wet pages took ages to dry. I had to change my approach. Below are the most acceptable results from that week.

In week two I was placated by some good results from combining Indian ink or Sumi ink (both water-resistant) with the fountain pen inks I favour. There were some pleasing resist effects and contrasts in texture.

There was a sort of breakthrough around Day 16. I changed some of the tools I was using and tried new ways of applying the ink to the page and good things happened. I started to see some unexpected effects that I could get excited about. I also settled into a series of variations on horizontals cut by verticals, playing with different densities and line qualities. I recognise the inspiration of wetlands and reed beds and sometimes I emphasise it. The line between mark-making and drawing is a very thin one - at least in my case.

I had been using pieces of scrap paper as a mask - brushing or sponging ink off the edge - and around day 25 discovered I could mono print the dried ink from these scraps onto a damp page - gorgeous! I also experimented with adding torn pieces of masking tape, which takes the ink differently.

Today is Day 33. There are still "bad" pages - experiments that don't work out or where I have been careless or heavy-handed - but they don't bother me so much. Of course the whole experience has been entirely consistent with the underlying principle of my "rule of 10" - the value of pushing yourself beyond your initial idea in order to discover the thing you hadn't imagined. And the need to pay attention to what is happening and respond to it - change tools, change my approach.

With seven days to go I notice that I'm repeating myself more - recreating marks or effects that I like. Not a bad thing but I think one advantage of doing this practice in forty day blocks is the opportunity to change something each time, to stop it becoming habitual and keep it fresh. I have several ideas for the next 40 days ...

Karen Thiessen - who was one of those who inspired me to do this in the first place - wrote an update on her own mark-making practice and I was also interested in this.