Romancing the Red

November in Upstate New York is grey and dark -- way too many scenes like this one outside my front door. But the greyed landscape, white snow and bare branches in the winter months do have a beauty -- even minus much longed for sunshine. In the "bloom where you are planted" tradition, I have decided to celebrate my surroundings with some monochromatic compositions.

The piece in progress below started life as a length of exhibition art cloth. I pulled it out and recently updated it with additional silkscreening to reflect my current fascination with language imagery. The idea of a color accent had been tickling at my mind while I contemplated this piece on my design wall -- possibly a royal blue, possibly gold or red -- and then I saw a small red rectangle of sheer organza laying on a stack of fabric in my studio. Oooh, red -- this will take no time at all, I thoughtly smugly, just to add an accent color. I cut the rectangle into three geometric shapes and placed them on this piece in what seemed like a decent arrangement. Well that was disappointing. This is where we could all nod knowingly and chuckle, because the red rectangles just didn't work. Then I got another brilliant idea as the evening got later and later, to stitch sheers on in irregular lines, much as I had done in my textural piece for the SDA member exhibition.

This first effort seemed thrilling by the time I went to bed, and I felt euphoric, but in the cold light of day I realized that the lines just weren't right.

At this point I was totally doubting the red accent idea, ready to return to a monochromatic piece. I took the piece in progress on Friday afternoon to my crit group. They all said KEEP THE RED, even suggested that it needed more. OK, I thought, go for it, and so I added more lines. I kept at it until I realized I was now creating a PATTERN of red lines on the surface -- a case of Red Running Rampant. No, NO!

I stopped. Now there was too much red and because of that it no longer had the visual impact that just an accent of red would give. I don't have anything against the idea of adding a red pattern over the surface except that it was not my original vision and intention for this piece.

So there is that word again. INTENTION. It is coming up a lot lately in my creative process right up there with REFERENCING (more about that another day). So I have been editing lines -- stitching down the sheers, auditioning the lines, then editing and removing sheers and/or stitching as I feel my way towards the combination that will satisfy my eye.

I would like to say that this last image is resolved, but it still isn't. In a day or two my eyes and mind will be fresher and more objective. I am not sure what else may get removed, shortened, edited -- or added!