Other Artwork

Dyeing, printing, painting and Lockdowns.

in , , , ,

Finding myself with more hours at home what better way to spend it by expanding my investigation of local natural dyestuff and then turning it into something useful!

This started during the 2020 COVID lockdown and is set to continue for however long we find ourselves in this current lockdown. It has been difficult not being able to go to work, but my situation is certainly more more secure than many others, for which I am grateful. The bonus time is wonderful for this kind of exploration and fun with fabric!

The Exotics That Crept In

I started a solar dye with some of the abundance of Marigold flowers that were blooming in my garden. I left it for three days in the sun. Stupidly expecting yellow/orange, I got a lovely mottled green.

METHOD

100gms of yarn

about 1 litre of boiling water

150gms of fresh Marigold flower heads

Large sealed Jar

Sun

I threw some sunflower seeds in my garden and they came up beautifully only to be all but gobbled down by snails or slugs. The few that made it grew large and flowered with big heads. Great food for my chooks I thought! When the flowers had finished, I was checking the seeds to see if they were dry and noticed that my finger tips were a brilliant bright purple. I remembered reading somewhere in my online research about sunflowers used as dye. So I apologised to the chickens who got lettuce instead and got out my dye pot!

METHOD

Approx. 100gms of Wool crepe soaked in alum water

1 litre of boiling water

Seeds from a Large sunflower head

Large sealed Jar

Sun

The colour took to the fabric almost immediately but I left it to steep for a couple of days. The colour can be shifted towards pinks (see above pic) with the addition of citric acid, or towards a blue/gray with the addition of soda ash.

Indigo Day

IMG_5942.JPG

I had a day with my Indigo pot which had been sorely neglected. It had completely dried out and a strange bunch of crystals had formed at the bottom of the pot that I wish I had photographed! I was unsure if I would be able to revive it, my google search didn’t turn up much so I just thought nothing ventured nothing gained.

I filled it with warm water and whisked up the crystals until they dissolved back into a liquid. I then skimmed off any detritus that floated on the surface and began to gently heat the pot up to 50 degrees. I checked the PH and adjusted then added the Hydros. The pot came back beautifully.

I had a few pieces of cloth that I thought the printing and colour wasn’t great on so I thought they would make great mottled dark blue and green fabrics for my bags. For the green I dyed the cloth in Turmeric first.

A Bundle of Dyeing

IMG_5990.JPG

I needed to expend my fabric stash and also wanted to try printing with some leaves, twigs and other vegetation that had been presoaked in mordant.

I had some beautiful medium weight wool crepe and some newly purchased fine wool crepe, as well as the final remnants of some doctor flannel that Mum had stashed for years.

With these experiments I was trying to keep some of the greens and produce colour variety. By introducing some dye material that had been soaked first in mordant, in this case iron or copper as well as unsoaked material it broadened the range of colours produced. I got browns from pale through to dark chocolate browns, almost black, some great purple tones and yes, green!

Painting

The exhibition schedule has all been postponed. Looking always for the silver lining, it has given me more time to paint and to prepare work in advance for when everything opens up again. Also time to check some other neglected things off the to do list, like finally joining The Botanical Artist Society of Australia and updating this website! Below is a few pictures of the painting I’ve been up to in the last 12 months. Some is commission work, some for teaching, some Exhibition work and some just for fun.

It's been a while.

in , ,

It’s been a long time since I have blogged. I have been busy, I just forgot to share. Anyway here’s what I’ve been up to recently.

The National Australian Botanic gardens,

Botanic Art group 2019 exhibition

Toona ciliata, Australian Red Cedar

The 2019 exhibition was titled “More Than Just a Pretty Plant”. The group worked to the theme of useful plants. Meaning all the paintings must depict plants where the product of the plant ( eg fruit, leaves, sap,oil,bark, roots, etc) has a use either traditional, colonial or modern. I chose to paint Toona ciliata, Australian Red Cedar.

Highly prized for it’s timber, Red Cedar was used extensively in Australia and was referred to by the early settlers as '“red gold”. The first reference to an Australian timber appears in the journal of Lieutenant William Bradley in October 1788. The wood described is cedar, which he considered to be “a bastard kind of Mohogany…that makes tolerable good furniture.” Cedar became the most popular timber used in early Australian cabinet making.

I have a special attachment to this subtropical and deciduous tree as my Dad has collected, restored and polished furniture made of red cedar for as long as I can remember, and my partner continues to do the same. To this end it’s nice that my finished work has a little something of all of us. My Dad supplied an example of the species for me to photograph and draw, he has one growing in his garden. He also supplied some vintage red cedar. This cedar my partner hand planed then polished turning it into lengths of framing angle. Lucky as I am to work in a small framing store, I cut and joined the cedar into a frame for my own picture!

That’s mine in the middle.

That’s mine in the middle.

Beechworth Botanica 2019

It was a pleasure to be part of Beechworth Botanica again in April of 2019. The show is run biannually and this is the second Beechworth Botanica.

Eucalyptus leucoxylon

Crowea saligna

Smoke coming over Mt Majura at the back of my house.

Smoke coming over Mt Majura at the back of my house.

Late 2019

The National Australian Botanic Gardens, Botanic Art Group wildlife Art show opened at the gardens in mid December 2019, Australia had already been dealing with Bushfires for months. It was late December that it started to really effect Canberra. Our air quality plummeted to the worst in the world and visibility was poor, people either escaped somewhere else or hulled up at home trying to escape the smoke and extreme temperatures. My parents farm came under threat on New Years eve. The tiny Victorian town of Walwa, 5Km away from their farmhouse was evacuated. They chose to stay and defend the property. Three fire fronts and many sleepless nights later they emerged so very lucky. The fire burnt to their back paddock fence post and no further.

Fires around Australia continued throughout January, then fire broke out in the ACT itself burning much of Namadgi national park. Suffice to say our exhibition did not go well with the Gardens having to close for much of the time and nobody out and about.

Acanthorhynchus tenuirostus, Eastern Spinebill

Vombatus ursinus, Wombat

Merops ornatus, Rainbow Beeater

Linchenostomus penicillatus, White Plumed Honeyeater

Thopha saccata, Cicada, Double Drummer

A new decade, a new way of living.

We had barely begun to breathe again after the fires were out in March of 2020, when the world changed so quickly that we are all still trying to catch up. No longer was it something happening in far flung places, it was happening there and on our doorstep and collectively all over the world!

COVID19 has given us whiplash and a state of suspended animation at the same time. At least that’s how I feel.

From my personal perspective things have changed a little. My partner must work from home now and the schools have been closed for two weeks. I work a few less hours at the Framing and Art supplies store and we aren’t sure how much longer that will last. Taking the days as they come.

All exhibitions are cancelled or postponed. I was preparing for a teaching workshop at the Canberra NatureLab on June 20th- 21st. You can still check it out on their website but at this stage I don’t know when or if it will happen.

https://natureartlab.com.au/collections/workshops


We are in Lockdown. I notice how quite it is with the reduced traffic noise, and I have been lucky with the visitors to my backyard and nearby wetland, of the non -human variety of course! Plenty of inspiration for future work!

Another bright side; I get to spend a bit of time with my son and we have had rain! So much it’s lovely and green. Also my partner this very day has managed to buy toilet paper!!