Parables and Parables II, Finished at Last!

I feel like a huge celebration is in order, I went back and added more details to Parables since I first pronounced it finished. Hopefully the additions improve its overall composition. This piece is 42" x 49". I also am celebrating the completion of Parables II, 41" x 46" and am delighted with the new ideas that popped out for this one.

You can see from the detail below that I outlined some of the letter forms so they retained their transparency, and stitched rows of straight stitch "fill" in others to create an interplay of some pieces being more dense and advancing, some more subtle.

While the second work seems more alive and spontaneous than the first one, I am pleased with them both. Feels like a great start to a New Year in which I am affirming great enjoyment and pleasure in making new work. I also was thrilled that the Memorial Art Gallery gift shop accepted all eight of my "Small Works" to sell. I'm pricing them at $250 each, framed.

I'm so delighted at meeting so many commitments (and admittedly worn out by the pace!) that I'm giving myself today to lounge on the couch, read and snooze. I'm finishing a biography of Georges Braque called George Braque: A Life, by Alex Danchev, which offers an amazing insight into the artist's artistic processes and life in France during WW I and WW II. I'm also reading the final chapter of Interpreting Art by Terry Barrett, which I'll write a post summarizing by tomorrow evening for the Ragged Cloth blog. It's another grey, cloudy day in upstate New York, but I am quite in tune with quietness today. I think being a Libra -- the balance sign of the Zodiac!- requires me to slow down for a day or two to replenish after a period of intense work.