Friendship and printing

This year I am determined to make more artwork for my walls. I would also like to work towards having a large enough body of work to have an exhibition sometime in the near future.

I do love my 'job' of making womens clothes, accessories etc.

But really my heart lies in textile art, paint, print and stitch.

I do get to be expressive and creative with the designs on the clothing, but I am aching to paint on canvas, get back to my machine embroidery and play around with mixed media again.

These are some old canvases a friend gave me and I have been experimenting with layering screen printed images and washes of colour.

There was already colour on these when I received them so it was nice not to start with a white canvas.

I also like that the finished piece contains the work of two artists, two friends :)

Painting, just because

Having worked in the shop on sat, I have had my fill of fabric and textiles. I have been desperate to just have a play wiht paint and see what happens.
I only started painting about a year ago and I just love playing with colour and texture.
Layer upon layer I build and it soothes my soul to mix all this fluid lovliness.
I dont really have an image in my mind when I begin, mostly its all abstract.
I start by grabbing the tubes whos colour takes my fancy at that partucular moment.
I often will smear pva as the base coat and let it dry for a day or so, it gives some great textures, similar to Gesso I suppose.
With this piece I have experimented with laying scunched tissue paper and old bits of lace, directly onto the paint for different textural and highlight areas.
At this stage I am only using acrylics but would like to try oils some time too.
I have used a brush and pallete knife for this piece.
The final layer ( with the red flowers) I have used and old table cloth as a stencil and spray painted with red.
Lots of fun !!! now I have got that painting out of my system... its back to my tactile textiles! watch this space ......... mim x