September Sky

I began this project, as I do with so many, by painting on fabric- cotton in this instance. I use a wet on wet process, and let the paint flow freely. I'm trying to capture the colors of the leaves in early fall, a particularly poignant time in my memory as it signaled the return to school, and the end of summer freedom.

Below is the fabric after it dried- I used opaque turquoise paint to represent the glimpses of sky that you see between the leaves.

Now I apply wax to the entire piece-

I crushed the hardened wax to produce random patterns, then scored it deeply to produce a prominent grid. Black paint was then applied over the entire surface.

after drying, I removed the wax by ironing on absorbent paper.

here it is after wax removal- yes I did gouge holes in the fabric while scoring the wax. Oops.

I decided to leave a good deal of the redeposited black paint in, to me it gives the feeling of the thousands of twigs criss crossing in every direction.

here is a detail of the stitching- used to emphasize both the semi regularity of the grid and the randomness of the paint.

September Sky, 36x24"