For this piece, I drew inspiration from a painting by Jean Jauneau. I was attracted to this piece as I have been inspired by the seaside and natural estuary landscape for the work I have done so far for assignment one. I was looking for a piece that did not glamorise the seascape, as its rather bleak and windswept here at this time of year. I am creatively inspired by the gothic horror of an unused, wintry seaside, with its peeling paint and thin, watery light.
In particular, I liked the way that Jauneau uses a palette of neutral colours, which she has skillfully blended, to give the impression of a very flat and sandy landscape. I was drawn to the use of reflection and, in particular, to the series of abstract dots in the foreground. What are these: rocks? seagulls? The painting leaves them unclear, but gave me a good opportunity to experiment with layering textures.
I cropped the piece to concentrate my eye on the foreground:
When cropped like this, it is not immediately evident that one is looking at a seascape; it could easily be sky or some other abstract landscape. I was drawn to this, especially the linear quality of the sand and sea, compared to the dots or splodges in the foreground. I like the way light has been used to create reflections and the sense of the ethereal. Is that seaspray? Light? Reflections from wet sand?
My first task was to wrap threads around a piece of card to create similar proportions of colour. I was very interested in working with non traditional materials. I used: thin plastic bags knotted together, yarn, embroidery thread, skinny reflective sewing thread, ribbons of different textures and string.
I must confess I was a little sceptical about the value of this exercise before I started, but I surprised myself. It forced me to focus very closely on the picture and the threads I was planning to use. I liked the reflective quality of the grey silk yarn in the foreground, especially compared to the dull functionality of the string. I loved the way the string could be knotted and frayed. I was drawn to the idea that string and plastic bags are items that may be found discarded on beaches too. It reminded me of the work of a local artist that I greatly admire, Martin Waters. He is the artist in residence at Spurn Point, and creates installations and pieces he calls "assemblages" from materials he finds washed up on the beach. A great example of his work is featured in Spurn café:
Martin Waters, http://martin-waters.co.uk/
The exercise wrapping yarns around cardboard forced me to focus very carefully on the proportions of colour, which is something that I would probably have overlooked previously. However, as my final piece developed, I found that I looked less and less at the source of inspiration (the Jauneau painting) and concentrated more upon the way the piece made me feel. This meant that I was more adventurous with materials. I believe this added life to the final piece, and made it unique in itself (it's almost impossible to know what inspired it, for example) however, I'm undecided whether it would have worked better if I had been more true to the proportions of the original piece. My final piece of work is more sunshiney than I had imagined, but I believe the texture I have used adds very definitely to the character of the work, and is reminiscent of the textures of the beach (wind, sand, waves, spray, smooth rocks, driftwood, thick grasses etc)
Finished project
I chose hessian as the base fabric because it worked with the theme of materials reclaimed from the beach. The Holderness coast, where I live, is the fastest eroding coast in Europe, and large swathes are held up with sand bags and big sheets of hessian. The colours also worked well with the neutral, sandy colours I was hoping to use, and the fabric was thick enough to enable me to embroider with ribbons and yarn.
I thought hard about how I might represent water, specifically the swell and retreat of waves. I was concerned that if I used stitches, then the effect might be quite flat. Instead I chose two different blue ribbons with different characteristics. The first (shown above) was a pale blue and translucent. I liked the way the translucency worked when twisted over itself, showing layers of different tone, or revealing the hessian beneath. The second ribbon was denser, a deeper greeny blue and shiny. It was the shine of the satin ribbon on this piece, and the golden strip, that attracted me: it enabled light to be reflected in the same sort of way that light was reflected from the water and sand of Jauneau's picture. The final effect was a bit more summery than I had anticipated; I'd like to repeat the exercise using a series of grey-brown ribbons, which would give a more realistic interpretation of the local coastline.
I thought carefully about how I might demonstrate sea foam and reflection, and went for a series of thin, reflective stitches in blue, gold and a multicoloured thread. The cross stitch I used was abstract, but I chose this to give a regular pattern and experiment with the way that light caught the two directions of the almost invisible thread. I used ribbon in running stitch and french knots to represent foam.
I was pleased with how the plastic bag yarn looked: the intention was to be a big wave crashing onto the sand. The length of stitch was just right for the material (the french knots didn't work as well; it wasn't apparent what their material was). I am pleaseed with the very varied textures at this corner of the piece, with the translucent ribbon, satin ribbon, hessian, cross stitched reflective yarn, twisted cotton knitting yarn and the edge of the embroidery thread foreground.
I was also thrilled with the way this part of the piece worked out. I embroidered a radiating long and short stitch pattern using a frayed ribbon. It looks like shallow water frothing against rocks. The rocks were represented using graduated shades of grey french knots. I love doing french knots and thoroughly enjoyed this part! The gradiated effect is more subtle than I imagined, but feels amazing; there is a real contrast between the fluffy water and the nobbly rocks.
In retrospect, I am a little disapppointed with the embroidery threads in the foreground. I wanted to experiment with a smooth, flat texture that extends towards the viewer of the piece. I also wanted to blend colours in the way that Jauneau has done in her foreground. If the texture had been too rough, the effect of the blended colours would, I think, have been lost somewhat.
I used long stitches, as it was an effective way of blending the colours and shades. However, the finished effects is rather too neat. If I repeated the project I would radiate more stitches upwards and diagonally to see how crossed threads might have looked. I did this a little in the bottom left section, and I think it is effective.
Overall, I am pleased with my work. I wonder whether I used too many french knots in the foreground. I did this to vary the textures across the piece, as it could have been significantly more linear without. However, I think I have ruined the effect my using too many. Next time I would be more judicious with my knots!
I am pleased with the blue yarn spiral on the right hand side. Although this had no figurative representation in the original Jauneau piece, it reminded me of ammonites (of which there are many on this coastline) and seashells. It also provided a radiating shape, which I think adds another layer of textural interest.
I learned a lot in the creation of this piece. The three main lessons I would take away are:
- to experiment with more abstract colours;
- that simple stitches show up the characteristics of unusual threads better than complex ones;
- that texture is enhanced with a balance of linear, radiating and interruptive shapes.
