You may have noticed I haven’t been posting…. Grin… but I can say I have been making, albeit small things. In working through my personal archetypes and examining my own art practices I have somehow fallen to the conclusion that I do really love small work . That is not to say the intent need be small, but the pieces I most enjoy working on are small and full of detail. Jane Dunnewold says in her book ,Creative Strength Training that with regards to art she thinks there are two major schools of thought: go BIG, or go obsessive. I think at the moment I am on the side of go obsessive.

Those of you who have been here before will know that I love doing paper collage. I have started using magazine pages in my collages as well as some of my own photo papers cut up. These past few months I have done some small paper collage then used them to inspire a small embroidery. The collages are about 3 1/4 x 5 1/2 inches. And this first embroidery was done in a square of cloth that measures 51/2 inches.

I decided to try this for the following reasons. A fellow embroidery enthusiast shared Trish Burrs work. Burr embroiders fine work in simple stitches while paying extra attention to blending colours to achieve an accurate rending. She, as do most instructors, suggests you do some samples to learn the technique. But you all know how that word sits with me, so I decided I could try to do this using my own “patterns”. Except I found that my collages were not actually colours that were blended so much as just numerous. I do blend in around the edges, but I was having so much fun using the numerous colours that I simply kept going. I hope you find them as interesting to look at as I did in making them. I’ll share the second pair next week.