Fibermania

Inspired by Paint

The paintings of Emily Mason at the LewAllen Contemporary Gallery in Santa Fe grabbed me by the throat.


You can feel the freedom and I want that same kind of freedom for my work, both in quilts and in paintings.

I was never confident enough to let go and paint like this when I was in art school. I felt I had to prove my ability to paint realistically to be taken seriously as an artist.

Now I know better.

These paintings make me feel that Emily doesn't care if anyone knows if she can make an apple look like an apple. Let someone else paint a realistic apple. She is painting something no one has seen before but yet we somehow recognize the emotion or spirit of the thing, or the place, or the day, or experience.

I got chills.

Each piece made me want to dive in. Or run and get canvas and paint...or find a way to make fabric do something as exciting as this.

I have also recently found the work of Peter Alberice, who works a bit more in neutrals, which are also becoming seductive to me.

I am loving the architectural compositions of his paintings and the subtlety of his colorations. There are some changes afoot for me in my quilting and perhaps they will also appear as paint on canvas or paper.

The structure and forms are semi block-like yet softer because of the blurring edges. Can this be accomplished with cloth? Perhaps. Is it necessary though?

The edges of shapes have always been so important to me, as they represent the drawn line, but in this case, the blurring and disappearing edge could be less important in cloth or altered to become more important, by finding ways to add contrast.

Details!

Those issues will all be decided in the translation.