When this challenge was posted, I thought I understood what the pieces were...and I started working on two pieces. However, when some of the FFFC'ers started saying that they were confused...I started looking a little further and decided that I wasn't doing it properly. The definition I took was one put out in Art History Basics, stating that color field paintings were abstract, not based on nature, treat the canvas or paper as a "field" of vision without a central focus; emphasize the flatness of the surface, and reveal the artists emotional state of mine or his or her expression.
One of the things I found interesting is that it could be "amorphous or clearly geometric, but is about the tension created by overlapping and interacting areas of flat color."
This sort of bothered me....How can one show have the overlapping and softness without using brushwork? And that then became my challenge. How to translate this into quilting. Obviously, I couldn't piece as it would create the sharp edge. That's when I hit upon using Angelina and foils. The coppery/gold area you see in the center "stripe" and the white-ish stripe are both areas which have been foiled, one with copper foil and the other with a opalescent one I think of as being gasoline on water. I then put pieces of Angelina down (the pink and the sort of reddish on the far left. The red is much redder in this light that it is in reality as I mixed a bright plum with "rusty nail."
The next problem was how to quilt it....If color field painting were all about flatness, then I didn't really want to have any texture, but quilting is ALL about texture. Even when we are quilting a piece and trying to make it flat, there is texture. So, I used a copper metallic thread and a pearl Sliver thread by Sulky for the quilting in the colored areas. The blue, I just quilted in long wavy lines in a blue rayon.
This is WAY out of the box for me as I don't usually do abstracts. I liked how the angelina and the foil gave the colors and soft edges similar to brushwork.
The piece measures 33 1/4" high x 19" wide. I don't have a name for it and would be happy to take suggestions as well as critiques.
Lisa Quintana aka Michigoose
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10 comments:
I like the way the angelina and foils softened the edges too. And I love the lime green! I think the black border is distracting and can't tell if it's part of the piece. I also like it flipped horizontally with the red at the bottom. It does look a bit like a landscape when it is flipped though. Nice job!
Thanks. There isn't a black border, it's borderless. What you're seeing is the background I shot it on. :)
I also originally meant to have the opalescent line more off center....it shifted while I put down the fusible and ironed it. I'm not yet very adept with foils.
Lisa Q.
The way in which the colors blend together is done very well. Who would of thought that you could use Angelina to do that? Very creative thinking. When I look at the piece, I see the flatness, no focal point, and the layering effect. Great thinking outside the box to create the colorfield look as I understand it.
I love your use of Angelina and foils on this. Very clever.
I absolutely LOVE this piece. I wish I had your creativity and ability of mixing materials and colours.
Another stunning piece, I think you hit it perfectly. This could be paint rather than fiber. Nice job!
Lisa, this is so good! Very creative and as I am now coming to understand Color field... I would say you did an excellent job. Nice use of angelina and foil!
Lisa, your comments really captured for me the issues I had with this challenge--there seemed to be a lot of contradictions in (my understanding of?) a color field. I think you did an excellent job of meeting the challenge and creating a piece that matches your "color field" definition. Your "blending" is very nice, but you still have distinct blocks of color. I particularly like the large field of blue, but the line that "interrupts" it gives the piece more interest and balance. Nice job!
Very creative use of non-tradional materials to accomplish a blurred edge. Pleasing colors. Nice piece.
Thanks. Michele, I also think that one of the stumbling blocks with wrapping your head around this topic is that I have found that some of the pages, I think Wiki in particular, had series of images and you could say whether or not you thought it was color field...in other words, people (general people) can add images which may muck it up a bit more.
I did notice that Edward Hamilton Booksellers has a book on color field and I just might get it so I can understand it better!
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