Looking at Recent Work

Now that I've had a chance to recover from the show last weekend, I've been doing a lot of thinking about what constitutes a body of work. I have a tendency to want to try different things, so I go from figurative work to colorful abstracts to sweet little vases of flowers to landscapes... you get the picture. There is really nothing wrong with that, but in my session with creativity coach Lesley Riley in June,  I received some solid advice to stick with what I'm best at - which we both felt was sketching with stitches and bits of appliqué, concentrating on figurative work.
Regardless of that, when planning for the show, I became obsessed with doing small decorative abstract  pieces, which were fun, but not my best work.

I added small stitched flower and leaf embroideries to the top two. The thing I do like about these pieces is the presentation. I bought 3/4" deep canvases from the craft store, painted them black and then mounted the needlework pieces on top of them. They look more modern than if they were framed under glass, but then I wonder if they would get dirty after a while. Right now I feel that I've done enough of these for awhile. I may put them in an etsy shop (yet to be opened!) and concentrate now on figurative work.

I did do a couple of "people pictures", women with rather blank expressions on their faces. I thought of them as being straightforward and uncontrived, but I think they need more - maybe a sketched  background and a bit more expression in their faces. These pieces are stretched over 11"x14" canvases.

Getting back to my original thought on this post, I think that when you see a presentation of an artist's work, it is nice to see a consistency in the various pieces - something that identifies that artist's style. I've been spending a lot of (too much) time on Pinterest lately and I've enjoyed collecting pictures of paintings by some of my favorite artists. One thing that becomes very obvious after awhile is the consistency in style that marks a painting as, for instance, a "Matisse" or a "Modigliani". Here is my board on Matisse. If you look at it you'll see what I mean - for that matter, look at any artist's body of work. Of course, there are always exceptions.

So, I'm getting back to work, taking out my linen and textured background fabrics, black and brown threads and creating a new group of pictures. I have a small exhibit coming up in November, so that is something to work toward.

I hope you're having an enjoyable and creative week!

It is cool and sunny here in New England - my favorite kind of weather!

Enjoy your day!