Well, am sewing away on this piece and it is taking me a very long time as expected. My hand keeps hurting due to the fine work, but I keep stretching and resting it. The yellow seems to be working and am seeing where it all takes me. I won’t cover this piece in embroidery though, there will be space to breathe!

Have started developing sunny arcs of yellow backstitch on my current embroidery of Blakeney marshes. My embroideries don’t seem to mind being shared as I go along, unlike drawing and painting sometimes. This is going to take me a long time I have the feeling. That’s ok it is glacial in pace this one, and takes new directions almost having a mind of it’s own! I will leave space too and be guided by the embroidery itself. I would love to see the Bayeux tapestry which is an iconic embroidery in fact, but worry about it being transported to this country and being damaged. Embroidery is so mindful and reflective as a practice, I am so happy I came to it albeit late!

Well, have added more Pebeo dyes to this current piece and have turned a bit of a corner I think. I was coming to a natural pause with the hand stitch and needed something different. I love how the dyes can take you in a new direction. I stretched the linen on a board and wet it and then mixed some dyes. I always like the purply greys you can get with tertiary colours so went for that. It’s hard with the linen because it goes so dark when you wet it so you are working in the dark. That adds to the fun and makes you more inclined to take risks I think. I like the effect now that it is dry and am going back in with the hand stitch that is meditative and slow .Click  to  enlarge.

I do change the paintings on my wall at home, and recently swapped one near the window in our living room for this piece made in 2013 for a collaboration with Cambridge arts collective Artipeeps. Sadly, the group is no more but it is good to revisit those times by rehanging the painting I made on our wall. It interprets the story of Freya and the Brisingamen necklace that she had the dwarves underground in Vanaheim make for her. They said she could have the necklace for nothing, but she paid a high price for it. Freya was Odin’s consort, and when he found out what she had done he sent Loki the trickster shapeshifter to steal the necklace whilst Freya slept.

I really enjoyed interpreting this myth in my own way in oil paint then ink dipped in a crows feather. It seems to have so many parallels to our world today, as is often the case with Norse myth. I enjoyed drawing and discovering the history of the Vikings in my native Cumbria. Great Gable mountain was know as Odin’s mountain. I sketched motifs from the Gosforth cross with its mix of Christian and Norse iconography. A thoroughly enjoyable and mysterious collaboration.

Delighted that Lily has chosen my ‘Yellow Garden’ painting from 1994 in oil on canvas to go on her site on Instagram. I am among some great painters on there! It was made from a sketch done on holiday in Brittany in a very special garden at a gite we stayed at. Here is the sketch fyi. I can revisit the garden through the painting and so can you all too now! Here is the link to Lily’s post any support you can give greatly appreciated!

https://www.instagram.com/p/DL2ca4hI4xU/?img_index=1

Well I am doing battle with my current creative embroidery of the reed beds from a recent visit to Norfolk. I enjoy the comforting nature and feel of working with the dyed linen, and the slow and repetitive experience of the hand stitch brings me into the moment continuously. I work from a drawing but don’t slavishly copy it, it evolves. Will share the drawing when I am ready, but not yet. I hold the creative space loosely, this is my freedom. That is why I don’t like colouring books or jigsaws they take that freedom away that is in all of us….

Well am underway with my new embroidery/painting. It is very satisfying using the backstitch on dyed areas of the linen, like slow little paths making their way across it. I will pile in with some oil paint when I have said all I want to with the slow-stitch, all by hand never machine. It gives you time, time to just be. To feel the silk thread and the softness of the linen and the way it moves like nothing else. It is almost alive.

So am in that place at the end of one piece of work and approaching another. Ideas are always mergling around so that is not the problem. Motivation is. Once I get into my groove and start making marks be it with dye, paint or stitch I am fine! The marshes at Blakeney Norfolk will form a starting point I think. Don’t know how much I will share, I never do! Got to guard the gold or I can stop completely, but can share a sketch that is not the one I will use to move forward. Keep moving forward even if it is only tiny steps…

Have completed my tree embroidery on Lithuanian linen. All hand embroidery free stitching with Pebeo dye washes. I decided to make it into a cushion cover with some of the ticking I had in the studio to frame the linen. I made some embroidery marks on the ticking as well but have come to a natural conclusion now. The embroidery is more flexible so can become a usable textile piece as I haven’t put oil paint elements on this.

Here is another image of my work underway on my embroidery/dye/painting piece so far at the end of March 25. The tree surgeons have cut down two beautiful willows behind us on a neighbours land. I was so sad this week about that, no-one else seems to mind! I do love trees and did protest to no avail. They have taken twenty years to grow. I do love trees and understand they are not mine! Can’t help being sad. They took so long to grow and were so balanced, the birds loved nesting in them. Anyway, here is the embroidery so far with patches of marks like Cezannes ‘patches’ , he loved trees too! Click to enlarge folks…