New Work with Photograph Inspiration

photo by Neville Hamilton

Here is another of Neville Hamilton's photos that I am attempting to interpret in fabric (with permission).   This photo was taken in Rustico, PEI.    What to think when you are walking in the fields and come upon three kitchen chairs sitting empty in the long grass.  It certainly makes my imagination run wild - thoughts of the ghosts of earlier days, getting together to chat away from chores, enjoying the sunshine, sitting in a field playing instruments......it could give a new spin to 'kitchen parties'.    Even the positioning of the chairs is interesting - and now they sit abandoned. 

Here is how I interpreted this scene so far.   I hand painted the sky (and I think I did a better job of it than the last sky I painted) then I added fields, trees, water, flowers etc and started stitching - no chairs yet.

It still needs lots of hand stitching in the fields and grasses, and some paint to blend the different areas more, and I will add some ends of barbed wire to the fence posts, then decide what to do about the chairs.  I cut out a couple of paper chairs and positioned them to see the effect.

I think I like it.  I need to turn the chair on the left a bit.  Probably 2 chairs will be enough - though 3 gives a different effect.  I'll see.  I have some other ideas for this as well but need to see if it will work.  It will be a surprise.

I finally overcame my fear of my new sewing machine and have been using it to add sleeves to the backs of some pieces and I now am more eager to try it out on a new piece but I first need to finish a couple more hand stitched ones for my exhibition.   The next piece I want to do is of a street in St. John's, NL.   I am also working on painting a piece on fabric with acrylic paints and haven't yet perfected thinning the paints with/without medium enough to have a soft hand.  Instead I am thinking that it will be impossible to hand stitch - so that may be the first machine stitched piece....we'll see.