When Is It Time To Move On?

     Do you ever get to a point when you are creating art and get stuck? I was working on my series "Transformations" and wanted to create at least two more large works and several more small collages. I dyed some fabrics for backgrounds and started to collect some photographs to use for imagery. But, I couldn't decide on the right colors or images. I tried sketching, painting, and auditioning digital attempts at compositions. After a few weeks, I realized I had lost the inspiration and energy I originally had for this series. And I found myself daydreaming about another series. So I decided to declare to myself that "Transformations" was done. Perhaps, someday, I'll come back to it.
     I'm feeling very good and excited about starting a new series that I may call "Journey". Over the years of traveling that I've done, I've seen a lot of exotic and wonderful things and have become enraptured with many of the cultures I've encountered. I didn't try to create art based on my travels because I'm not excited about recreating landscapes or images of people. Instead, I want to capture moods, styles, feelings, etc. and didn't know how to do that. But my latest trip to Morocco has given me ideas. In the  abstract patterns of the rugs I could see the mountain and desert landscape. In the abstract patterns on the textiles, I could see the plants and architecture.
     So I've decided to use patterns in local textiles as way to express types of journeys we all experience. I began my exploration into this by printing a couple of exotic patterns onto gray fabric with my printer and using Misty Fuse to attach them to pages in my sketchbook. Then I started to let my imagination take me as I sketched and free-associated words and phrases. I used a mind map like this to inspire the previous series.

sketch book pages

Then I used some markers to add color. On the next pages, I'm going to try to come up with ways to use the imagery of textiles to express some of those ideas and develop them into a form I can put on fabric with dye, printing, stamping, and stitching. 

     The other evening, I started a small piece with fabrics I had leftover from dye experiments. I fused them to felt, thermofax printed over them with transparent white paint, and added some stitches just to see what effects I could get.

experiment

     So that's where I am now. In the experimental stage, which I find very fun and full of inspiration. This has helped me to know it's time for me to let "Transformations" go and begin a new journey.

I'm linking this to Off The Wall Friday where you can find other art blogs. Please leave comments for the artists so that they know you stopped by. Thanks for visiting.