SILKWORM - Silk Paintersment of silk from raising silkworms to weaving these magical fibers into a...

Silk Lamp by Karen Sistek

Stormy Morning, Marlyse Carroll

SILKWORMThe Magazine of Silk Painters International

Volume 23, Issue 1, Spring 2016

Addie Chernus PaintsEn Plein Air

Festival 2016!Why We Left Santa Fe

Marlyse Carroll Describes theFire that Changed Her Life

Stephanie Gay Paints theBlended Landscape

2 Silkworm - Volume 23, Issue 1

TABLE OF CONTENTSVolume 23, Issue 1, Spring 2016

Festival 2016! Why We Left Santa Feby Festival Coordinators Gloria Lanza Bajo and Joyce Estes

From Black Saturday to the Phoenix Rising by Marlyse Carroll

Town and Country with Stephanie Gay by Tunizia Abdur-Raheem

060816Departments

From the Editor’s Desk

Kaki’s KornerSPIN’s President Sheds a LittleLight on her Angle of the World

The Creative Journey Brecia Kralovic-Logan

How-To-Do-ItVisiting Artists Share Technique. This Time: Addie ChernusEn Plein Air!

0304

0512

Features

Phoenix Rising 1 by Marlyse Carroll

3Silkworm - Volume 23, Issue 1

Please send Letters to the Editor. Stay in touch. We want you to be involved. If you have comments, complaints or suggestions, let us know. Send cor-respondence or photos to [email protected] you have photographs of your art that you would like to have showcased in the Silkworm, send photos with your name and the name of the piece. The photo size should be minimum 5”x 7” and 300 dpi for best printing.To become a member of SPIN or renew your membership, visit www.silkpainters.org/membership.html. Membership is $50 US, $55 North American and $62 International.

CreditsEditor: Tunizia Abdur-RaheemMembership Database: Gloria Lanza-Bajo Layout: Tunizia Abdur-RaheemCopyeditor: Phyllis Gordon

Send change of address or questions about membership status to Gloria Lanza-Bajo - Membership ChairEmail: [email protected]: 718 624-0313Want to advertise in Silkworm? Send for our media kit at [email protected] us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/silkpainters/All works presented in the magazine are the property of the artists.

From the Editor’s DeskThis year, we will explore the landscape. All kinds of landscapes. We start with

Stephanie Gay and Marlyse Carroll. Stephanie lives in a small town in England, close to the country, and works in London. She paints the landscape of her life with a little of town and of country. Marlyse shares the pain and beauty of the marred landscape when nature destroys and is then reborn. Addie Chernus shares her outdoor painting experiences.

One thing I noticed about the paintings is how the painters use some very basic silk painting techniques to create texture and build lines. The gutta structure doesn’t detract or make the painting cartoonish as some believe is the case. Also noted is how the artists use color to create the mood and tenor of the world they are creating. And they are creating worlds, for note how the landscapes are often not so detailed but more suggestive. It just goes to show that in the right skilled hands, even the simple can be sublime.

Future issues will be about interior landscapes. Joanna White, who is teaching at this year’s conference, will write about her insight with zentagles. Of course, we will cover some of the conference which will be happening in the lush autumn landscape of southern U.S. We travel to other countries to explore the landscapes of our international members. We may visit the fantastic landscape and will finish by investigating our own personal landscapes. To that end, if you want to be in-cluded in the personal landscape of where you create, send a photo of your studio.

We hope that you enjoy the current issue. Welcome to spring. I hope the sun is shining on you wherever you may be.

Tunizia Abdur-Raheem, Editor

Tunizia The Cobb by Stephanie Gay


This quarter’s issue features landscape artists and I’m impatiently waiting its arrival. The plein air exhibits I’ve found intriguing are the ones that illustrate a journey as

well as a beautiful rendition of an outdoor scene. This journey idea brought my attention to our silk history which in and of itself is a rich historic landscape.

I’ve been brows-ing through my photos of the Silk Cloud Brocade Museum I visited in Nanjing, China. I was impressed by the thousands of years of heritage and countless arti-sans who devoted their lives to silk. In some cases, the success of entire empires rested upon silk. Using silk history resources, I have taken snippets of history, approximately 1000 years apart, to illustrate the amazing development of silk.

2640 BC. There’s a wonderful tale of the Chinese Empress, Leizui, who in 2,640 BC, discovered silk fiber when a cocoon dropped into her tea cup. She began to unravel the 900 meters of silk fiber and dreamed of weaving it into cloth. Legend has it that she was known as the goddess of silk. She directed the develop-ment of silk from raising silkworms to weaving these magical fibers into a luminous fabric.

1640 BC. One of the earliest examples of genetic engineering started with the domestication of the Mori Bombyx silk moth. The production of silk was a treasured secret of the Chinese for 2,500 years. Because of its rarity and labor intensity, silk became a luxury reserved for royalty or the wealthy. Only royalty or those honored by the Royal Houses were allowed to wear it.

500 BC. The Silk Road which traveled toward the west was opened by the Chinese. Camels, yaks and as many as 100-500 people spent about one year traveling 5,000 miles. It was never a single route but a network of desert tracks and mountain-ous trails. Silk at this time was worth it’s weight in gold. By 300 BC, China’s great wall had been completed which facilitated the transfer of information, culture and goods.

200 AD. Many other countries had, by this time, developed their own silk production. However, China was able to maintain a stronghold on silk since sharing secrets outside the sericulture was punishable by death. However, there was some inventive industrial espionage occurring such as the kidnapping of silk workers, or smuggling silkworm eggs in the hollow canes of visit-ing monks.

640 AD. China armed its ambassadors with gifts of silk for all the Royal Houses along the Silk Road. This clever promotion

of silk to the royalty of India, Russia, Persia, Arabia, Egypt, and Europe created a demand for silk thus skyrocketing its value.

1609. King James I, who was obsessed with silk, sent silk-worms and mulberry seeds to colonial Williamsburg in hopes of creating his own silk empire in the new world.

1740. In the United States, silk was exported from Phila-delphia & Savannah to Eng-land. The silk exportation was abandoned when indigo and cotton and tobacco became more lucrative and easier to produce.

1840. Although Chinese royalty had produced brocade for centuries, Joseph M. Jacquard developed woven textured silk with the use of patterned punch cards which was a forerunner of the computer.

1865. In France’s small silk industry, disease and infec-

tion in a silkworm colony was common during this time. Louis

Pasteur found the source by developing a way to test female moths for the disease.

1869. The gypsy moth was imported to Massachusetts to be cross-bred with the Bombyx Mori. The idea was that the Gypsy/Bombyx cross would be easier to raise. Some of these test cater-pillars escaped causing pest-control problems, to this day, across North America.

1880. The Canadian Pacific railways, dedicated trains to exclu-sively carry precious Japanese silk to Eastern mills. These heavily guarded freight trains, with superior track rights, stopped only to change locomotives and crews, which they completed in under five minutes.

1930. The U.S. stock market crash of 1929 and the following depression decimated the market of luxury silk.

1950s to the present: Silk has since made a slow recovery into our lives only to be mimicked by synthetic fabrics of lesser quality.

1996. Silk Painters International was founded by Jan Janas and Diane Tuckman.

Today. We are the lucky recipients of a vast treasury of ancient silk artisans’ contributions to the silk culture created 4000 year ago. This is far from a complete story of silk, therefore it’s up to us to contribute more treasures to the history of silk.*

*References will be available on our website.

Kaki’s Korner: Message from the President

Perspective

Kaki Steward, President

Kaki

Silk Embroidery from Silk Cloud Brocade Museum in Nanjing, China


Each of us truly is a marvel, a complex and wondrous being capable of amazing feats. We all

have a distinctive way of interpreting and translating our life experiences, approach-ing our daily challenges and relating to our fellow beings and the world around us. Our unique inner landscape is formed by our attitudes, thoughts, beliefs and emotions. As creative artists, we can benefit from taking the time to explore what thoughts, attitudes and beliefs we are experiencing and practice nurturing those that support and energize us. When we pay close attention, we may find that over time, certain thoughts have evolved into stories that are limiting our creative potential. I call these “Minimizing Myths.”

Minimizing myths are the stories that we have told ourselves that keep us from stretching beyond our comfort zone. Ev-eryone loves a good story. We hold onto the story of how we can’t do something, or that we haven’t got the right kind of (fill in the blank) to succeed. These minimizing myths are thoughts that we hold to be true but they are more opinion than fact. We begin to frame them as truth rather than seeing them as thoughts of criticism, judgment or self-doubt. When we examine these stories and allow ourselves to see through them we begin to create an inner environment of self-acceptance and love that reflects our uniqueness.

Here are some commonly held minimiz-ing myths:

• I’m too old and it’s too late to begin being creative.

• I don’t have any talent.• I always mess up.

In order to dispel a long held belief that does not serve us, try writing out an alternative story that feels empowering to replace the old story. Think of this as a reconstruction of your inner landscape. Not only do you want to excavate the beliefs that don’t serve you, you also want to build in a new view.

Here are some sugges-tions for writing a new story:

• Acknowledge the fear that you feel that has kept you believing in the minimizing myth.

• Journal about your feelings calling on your courageous and accepting heart.

• Write out a new story with you as the hero, claiming your power to create anything that you desire.

• Fill in the details of what that would look like. Where does this new story take place? What kind of visuals would you create to accompany your story? What kind of soundtrack? Would there be dance numbers? What kind? Write it all out in vivid color.

Actively addressing our inner beliefs and choosing to restructure our attitudes is an ongoing process. You are the storyteller. You get to live the story that you choose. Why not choose believing that you are a unique marvel?

Brecia Kralovic-Logan is a fiber artist, Creativity Coach and the author of The Spiral of Creativity. Visit her atwww.thespiralofcreativity.com andwww.breciacreative.com.

The Landscapes of our IndividualityThe Creative Journey

by Brecia Kralovic-Logan

“Do you know what you are? You are a marvel. You are unique. In all of the years that have passed there has never been another child like you… ”-- Pablo Picasso


The biennial SPIN festivals are a tradition that we all look forward to attending. This year, we’ve changed the loca-tion and the format to make the festival available to more people from the East Coast of the United States. And, we created a format that would allow people, regionally, to come for just the weekend, if this is their preference.

As you should all know by now, the Festival will be held October 7 - 15, 2016 at Ar-rowmont School of Art & Craft. The format includes a weekend conference with seminars to inspire us and introduce us to new ideas.

We have engaged 23 well re-spected and talented teachers.

Festival 2016: Silk in Transition…and why we moved from Santa Fe

Arrowmont in Autumn

Geoffrey A. Wolpert Gallery


Our Keynote Speaker is David Higgins a silk artist from Australia. He will also be teaching the same class twice so that more people will have the opportunity to take his class. Other instructors who have committed include: Suzanne Punch, Jean-Louis Mireault, Margaret Agner, Sissi Siska and Julie Cox Hamm to name a few. All information will be posted on the website by April 15, 2016. Registra-tion will open May 1, 2016 on the East and West Coast, at the same time.

We are particularly happy with the fa-cilities at Arrowmont because they afford us the opportunity to spend more time together. Everything is in one place. This answers the concerns from the past that we have not had lots of time to spend together to just “hang out.” There are many small living room type spaces in all the build-ings. It is also not a dry campus so we can visit and share a glass of wine.

Gatlinburg is a beautiful little city in the Smoky Mountains of the U.S. The campus is located conveniently to restaurants and shops. There is a hotel across the street for those who choose to stay off campus, but we are really encouraging everyone to stay in one place. Having said this, another difference is that your registration will pay for all meals on campus.

There will be workshops on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday, Friday. Wednesday will be a free day for relaxing or sightsee-ing. The Fashion Show will be held on the Wednesday evening with a reception and dinner. So, while we’ll miss Santa Fe, there are so many new things to look forward to in planning for the Festival in October. We look forward to seeing you there.

Deb McMurray from Arrowmont with Fes-tival 2016 Co-Chairs Joyce Estes and Gloria Lanza-Bajo.

Instructor and Keynote Speaker at the Confer-ence, silk artist, photographer and graphic designer, David Higgins.

Dining Hall

Classroom


From Black Saturday to the Phoenix Reborn


From Black Saturday to the Phoenix RebornBy Marlyse Carroll

Each country has significant days that are meaningful to its citizens. Here in Australia ‘Black Saturday’ evokes a human and ecological tragedy that rocked our world in February 2009.

On that hot summer day, the worst bushfire in Australian history raged through the mag-nificent wooded hills north of Melbourne where I live with my husband Michael.

Here’s what I wrote a few days later:‘The black and white landscape looks like a stark, surrealist painting. Or a nightmarish vi-

sion. Grey earth. Skeletal black trees. A smoke-filled white sky. People ambling aimlessly, in a daze. One house after another burnt to the ground.

Silence. No bird songs, no dogs barking, no laughter. No electricity or running water either. Here and there, army tents, police cars and men in uniform surround the charred remains

of cars driven into trees and ditches.The subtle presence of death permeates both outer and inner worlds. Like ghosts, masked

people in white overalls search through piles of ashes. I hardly dare say what they’re looking for…

Teeth. Am I dreaming? If I am, what a nightmare…Only five days ago, when Michael and I left the Kinglake Ranges to go and teach downtown,

children played under tall Mountain Ash trees. Colourful birds flew noisily overhead. Parrots squawked. And a young mother, infant on her hip, was watering tree ferns whilst chooks (chickens) pecked the ground around them.

We’re now slowly driving past a family home reduced to a heap of dust, bricks and metal. That’s it… A place like ours, a place like yours, a house where people loved, laughed, fought and dreamt has gone back to dust. Where is this family now? Have they also been reduced to dust or did they escape in time?

Baby, where are you? Silent tears run down my cheeks. Who was in those homes, in those cars when they entered the wall of flames? I just cannot

imagine that moment. Oh God… Tell me it was quick. Tell me it only took a split second between life and death,

between terror and love, between suffering and eternal light. Tell me that, at soul level, all is well.

Right now, I don’t know any longer what to believe.’Michael and I were amongst the lucky ones. We were running a meditation retreat in down-

town Melbourne when the fire destroyed 780 houses and killed 178 people and thousands of animals in our rural community.

The wind changed direction in time to save our home and some of our neighbours.Within a few days, those of us who were strong enough to support others banded together. Local artists in particular acknowledged the potential of art to bring meaning to torn lives

and eventually heal broken hearts.

Black Saturday. This painting was completed very quickly, in one go and in a highly emotional state.


So whilst charities offered financial help and counselling programs, we started working towards an art-led recovery. We embraced art therapy without calling it therapy.

Within a short time, grants poured in. Generous businesses also donated an extraordinary amount of art materials to give away.

Our intention was threefold: first of all, to help participants express and release their emotions in a supportive environ-ment. Secondly to help them discover inner resources they didn’t know they had. And thirdly to strengthen bonds between community members.

So we ran courses and encouraged survivors to practice an art form of their choice. Musos held jam sessions at the lo-cal pub – one of the only public buildings still standing. Volunteers helped school children draw their experience of the fire and talk about it. Teenagers painted a mural.

Simultaneously, compassionate thera-pists, healers and body-workers flocked in from all around Australia. They took residence in temporary army tents and offered their services free of charge.

Other enterprising people used the healing power of food. Preparing and sharing free community meals three times a week literally nourishing hun-dreds of families now crammed together in donated caravans.

This outpouring of love lasted for over a year. I’m still in awe of the overall gen-erosity shown by the world at large.

But back to art. Two months after Black Saturday, my

friends and I organised an art show held over Easter. There again, visual arts, impromptu performances, massage, music, dance and food helped create a new normal for those whose lives had changed forever.

Renewal. A few months after a

bushfire, Australian tree grasses and some eucalyptus

trees come back to life in an explosion

of colours. Renewal

Bushfire. Aboriginal people have used fire for thousands of years to cleanse and regenerate the land. We now have terrible bushfires because we don't 'burn back' as they used to.


Amongst other artists, I demonstrated silk painting under a big marquee. And suddenly I realised that, since Black Saturday, I hadn’t made time to paint.

With heart and soul crying out in grief, I too needed the mind-body-spirit reconnection I was encouraging others to seek through art. And I knew that, in order to move on, I first had to face the devastation brought on by fire.

So the following weekend, in the privacy of our untouched home and with tears falling onto the silk, I painted four highly emotive fire paintings.

Several more followed. Eventually I lost the urge to explore destruction and death.

Months later, as spring unleashed its magic – September/October/November in Australia – nature started to show signs of regeneration. The colour green reappeared as seeds activated by fire sprouted.

And some seemingly dead eucalyptus trees suddenly looked surreal when clusters of pink leaves emerged from their blackened trunks.

By Christmas, I was ready to embrace renewal: the phoenix. I hap-pily gave these paintings away.

And on the first anniversary of Black Saturday, in February 2010, I had the honour to be one of six artists selected amongst 100+ ap-plicants for a commemorative art exhibition at the Melbourne World Trade Centre.

More phoenixes followed, each one flying higher than its predecessor.

Since then, my life has continued to evolve, with art taking on an increasingly dominant role.

Michael and I are now retired from our practice as therapists and meditation teachers. We still live in Kinglake, which is greener than ever. Many people left the mountain; others moved in. The village has new shops and we’ll soon enjoy a community art centre.

After years without visible wildlife, kangaroos are back in the fields. Life goes on…

As for Michael and I, we’ve built a beautiful hexagonal art studio next to the house. And when I’m not running my small business in silk painting, I play there! Like the Phoenix, I’ve been reborn from the ashes of my old life.

www.handpaintedsilkscarves.com.auwww.marlysecarrollart.comwww.amigoingmad.com.au

Phoenix 2

In Between Worlds

Parallel Universe with Lights

Eye of God


In the spring and summer of 2012, my husband Mike and I decided to go on a plein air silk painting adventure.

For this trip we took our van, “Yoda,” and camped. During this trip I allowed myself great latitude in experimenting with colors, composition and techniques.

All of the plein air silk paintings were completed in one to two hours. I tried to capture the spirit of time and place. A pocket digital camera was used to capture the visual actuality. I never went anywhere without my backpack filled with sketching supplies.

My Plein Air Silk PaintingEuropean Adventure

Water-based Black Resist and DyesI used this resist because I wanted to create paintings with piz-

zazz and ease of resisting over dyed silk. Often I free hand resisted.The dyes were steam set: colors were primary, secondary and

a gray. They were decanted into plastic 2 oz. Nalgene bottles and placed in a box with holes for the bottles. Daily supplies fit into a plastic tool box. Extra dyes and silk were brought on the trip.

I enjoyed adding watercolors to my water-based ink sketches. As silk artists we know the enjoyment colors and values bring. At times I inked composite drawing of what interested me and what was typical of an area. My drawings, notes, plein air silk paint-ings and memories of the towns are the basis for my studio silk paintings. In some locations it was too difficult to bring the silk supplies, but my hip pack filled with drawing tools came as always.

For saving whites, I avoided the areas to be kept white. I mixed tints in a small pallet. All my other dye applications were allowed to mix on the silk.

I used dots and squiggles on tinted silk and Wet on Dry for texture.

Habotai Silk12mm Habotai was pre-cut to 22.5” x 16.5.” A fabric bag held

the white and dyed silk. At home I steamed all the silks.Brushes, Pens, Drawing Supplies

Chinese brushes, small and medium. Fabric pen. I always car-ried my hip pack with: sketch book, pencil, black ink pens (water-based and not), watercolor set, brush and rag.

Often I plein air silk painted at our campground using my sketches and watercolors from a previous outing. I tried to capture some of the elegance and history of the scenes. One of my pens was filled with water-based black ink, so I was able to create value studies us-ing water to spread the ink. I often had to sketch very fast, before the people walked away. Writing notes about the weather, impres-sion or any thoughts added to the personal impact of the sketches.

Dry Brush was great for details and texture. In dry, hot areas I had to add my Wet on Wet dyes quickly.Free Flow was the only silk treatment used. Applying harmo-

nious dyes Wet on Dry plus layering of tints form the basis of my Free Flow technique.

PLEIN AIR SILK PAINTING TECHNIQUES

SUPPLIES

My Plein Air Framing SystemArty’s system, 22” x 22”, was used to hold the stretched silk.

An aluminum tripod was the support.

Sketching and Water Coloring in Plein Air

_________________The elements of nature:

wind, heat, cold, sun, bugs and beauty combine to make plein air painting

a memorable experience worth having.

_________________


Watercolor Drawing The rooftops begged to be painted. I looked and studied the scene for format, values, exclusions and inclusions plus my feel-ings. When I placed a pen line wrong, I used extra lines to build more interesting art.

Free Hand ResistingResist was applied free hand. Harmonious colors mixed wet on wet and tints were ap-plied over the stones and water.

Wet on DryWet on dry creates shapes within resisted areas, as the roofs and walls. Resist lines on the water show a transparent surface. I chose not to resist each tile or brick. My plein air art is a quick emotional response.

Plein Air Steamed Silk Painting of “Brugge” ©

Color and design are my passions. Notice the reflected colors in the wa-ter. All of the silk art painted on our trip was carefully wrapped and placed in a fabric bag and steamed at home.

Studio Painting: “Brugge” ©“Brugge”, 45” x 50” Habotai 16 mm, was created from my silk plein air painting, photos of art in process and watercolor sketch I completed in Brugge, Belgium. Viewing the plein air silk painting brought back memories of the colors, cool air and sounds of this very interesting city.

Brugge, Belgium

_________________

There is a magical freedom for color, subject and technique

choices which create experiences for innovation. These skills will become part of who you are as

an artist and improve your studio work, too.

_________________


Studio art has been gleaned and recreated from my plein air sketches, watercolors, silk paintings and memories. To help the drawing process of going from a small image to a large image, I used a blueprint shop. I take my digital picture of a painting into Photoshop, crop, size the image, change to gray scale and save as a portable document format (pdf). A USB stick carries the image to the shop. My goal for studio work is to capture the energy, emotions and “look” of my plein air experiences.

Studio “Sailing in Rapallo” © “Rapallo” 45”x 60” Habotai 16mm, was created from memories of the harbor and a watercolor sketch I painted in plein air. I wanted this painting to look and feel like the watercolor painting which preceded the studio art. Resist lines were not “perfect” nor were the dye applications. It has a free feeling which I enjoy and remember from Rapallo. The expanse of moving water and boats sailing round out the experiences we enjoyed in Rapallo.

Plein Air Art to Studio Art

Plein Air Watercolor Sketch of Rapallo

The buildings are ancient, weathered and lovely in their “Wabi Sabi” way. Gardens are beautifully kept with flowers and fresh vegetables. Walk-ing up out of the town you can see the Matterhorn which dominates over the green hills dotted with tiny houses and evergreen trees. “Glorious Zermatt” 45” x 60,” Habotai 16mm was created using the watercolor sketch drawn in plein air from where we sat on a green slope eating lunch.

Studio “Glorious Zermatt” ©

Zermatt, Switzerland

Rapallo, Italy

Plein Air Watercolor Sketch of Zermatt


Leti Stiles’ Garden Delight

Give Plein Air Silk Painting a Try

Plein air silk painting is one of the most glorious and educational experiences an artist can have. There is a definite charm about being outside and painting, even with bugs, wind and sun. Fewer supplies gives the artist a “lightness” in choosing colors and techniques. There is a spontaneity and freedom in plein air painting. Simplify, exaggerate, you are the boss. Enjoy! If you are not yet ready for silk painting outside, try sketching. Keep a sketch book and pen with you. The next step add watercolor washes to your sketches. Then try plein air silk painting in your back yard. Let me know if you have any questions about Plein Air Silk Painting or if you want instructions to build your own plein air tripod. Visit me at [email protected].

Addie has been teaching silk art at the college level for over 13 years and Plein Air Silk Painting is part of the course. Her book, “ADDIE SILK ART: Plein Air Silk Painting in Europe,” is available from Dharma Trading.


The first color you see when you visit Stephanie’s website is green.

She paints the verdant landscape around her home, Maidenhead, a small town of roughly 75,000 inhabitants about 30 miles west of London. For one who’s only visited the United Kingdom via the Inter-net, the impression is of town mingling with country mixing with city. Stephanie confirms. “The UK is very small. So the towns are close together. But there’s plenty of countryside in between. I live in the town but I can walk out into the countryside in about 10 minutes.”

Commuting to London by train where she works three days a week, she does get to take in the landscape. Traveling from town through country to big city and back, perhaps this is where her love of landscape developed. And perhaps why she paints these commingling environs. Painting trees and grass but also roads and bridges makes for a stimulating blend of town and country. The paintings are at once peaceful and evocative.

Her delight in painting the man-made landscape as it blends into the natural environment was born of late. Accord-ing to Stephanie, “Somebody suggested to me, ‘you might try doing some sort of cityscapes.’ It was something I’d never done because I thought it was going to be really hard -- on silk -- to get enough detail to show what your subject is – so it’s recognizable – but not entirely cover the work in lines and gutta and structure. It’s quite a difficult balance to get.” But she seems to be striking that balance. “I quite like the idea of something a bit more ur-ban and industrial on a delicate medium

Town and CountryPainting the Blended Landscape with Stephanie Gay

By Tunizia Abdur-Raheem

What is This Life if Full of Care by William Henry Davies

What is this life if, full of care,We have no time to stand and stare.No time to stand beneath the boughsAnd stare as long as sheep or cows.

No time to see, when woods we pass,Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.

No time to see, in broad daylight,Streams full of stars, like skies at night.

No time to turn at Beauty’s glance,And watch her feet, how they can dance.

No time to wait till her mouth canEnrich that smile her eyes began.A poor life this is if, full of care,

We have no time to stand and stare.

Barge at Ray Mill Island


like silk. It’s quite an interesting juxtaposi-tion, really.”

After doing a few, she was encouraged. “People seem to like the result so I carried on and have done a few more. There’s a picture that I did – one of St. Paul’s Cathe-dral – I was quite drawn to the fact that, in London, you’ve got this kind of sprawl of modern buildings that are really just blocks of color when you look at them. Then you get this amazing structure of St. Paul’s, the detail and splendor of it, just rises out above that. So I was quite interested by that idea and I might do a bit more on that kind of idea.”

Yet, painting the landscape while in the landscape is difficult, especially for silk painters. “I have painted on silk outside but it’s a bit challenging. You get a gust of wind and everything goes everywhere or you get loads of bugs landing on it,” she laughs. So she uses a combination of sketches and photographs – mostly her own – occasionally supplementing her stash with copyright free photos from the web. “If I can, I go and sit on site and I do the basic drawing on site and then I take lots of photographs. I then bring it back to the studio and do it on silk in the studio.”

Stephanie completed a three month foundation course at the Slade School of Art in London in 2007. Other than that, she uses her natural gifts. About

her younger years she states, “It was very uninspiring when I was at school. I was always – when I was a child and a teenager – very creative, making things, making my own cloths and that sort of thing. But not particularly painting.”

It was later than she began to explore her creative side more. Married with two children, she states, “When my kids were little, I wanted something else to do. I started going out to a few evening classes in watercolors and it started from there.”

How did she discover the addictive art of silk painting? She had been painting in watercolors and oils for a bit and then discovered silk while on vacation. It was one class at a hotel in what she calls the “west country” in the hotel’s craft center. “I went on holiday and tried a class where they were painting scarves and that sort of thing. I just loved it. There was something about the medium that really sparked my imagination and I thought, ‘I really want to do this.’ So, I’ve done it ever since for about the last ten years.”

Could it have been a SPIN instructor? She doesn’t remember the instructor. “It was just a little class and really basic. I just loved the vibrancy of the color that you can get with it. It’s sort of like watercolor in a lot of the technique. But you get a depth of color and you can do things that

you can’t do with watercolor and I just think it’s so much fun.”

She discovered SPIN through Face-book. She did a search on silk painting and SPIN’s Facebook page came up. “I thought. “Wow, there’s all these amazing people.” Like many silk painters, Stepha-nie was somewhat isolated in her experi-ence of the art. “I never realized. Not that many people around where I am in the U.K. seem to do it [silk painting].” But

after viewing SPIN’S Facebook page, with nearly 4,000 participants, she realizes the potential size of the community of artists who love the silks. “There’s thousands of people doing it,” she states.

She’s been with SPIN for 18 months. And while she won’t make it to this year’s conference, she doesn’t entirely rule it out. She posits that maybe some time in the future. (Maybe they will come and her husband will become a member of the “Silky Bottom Boys,” the musical band of husbands that always seems to form at every conference?)

As for her tools, Stephanie uses water-based iron fix paints, Pebeo and Marabu, with watercolor brushes. She likes habotai 8mm and pongee 5mm. She orders her silk through painter’s resources, but has found a surprising local source. “I

Duck and Bollard

View from Chelsea Embankment


recently discovered that there’s a working silk mill not far from me that weaves its own silk. I’ve been experimenting with that. I’ve done a few paintings on their silk. I’m doing an exhibition of work there later this year. So I plan to paint quite a bit more on some of their silks, which is fun.”

She uses traditional methods of presen-tation, using frames and placing the silk under glass. “I stretch the silk onto the mount and then frame that under glass. I feel that suits the more contemporary paintings I’m doing. I have, in the past, stretched the silk over a piece of mount board and matted that onto painted MDF (medium-density fibreboard) so there’s no frame around the outside and no glass over the top. I have done - also in the past, much more abstract work. From feedback from customers, they like the traditional framing, so that’s what I stick with.”

Like many silk artists, when you work in a unique medium, sometimes you’re pressed into service to teach what you know. No different for Stephanie. She says, “I do occasional workshops. I have done some workshops for some of the art societies. I will do workshops in my studio, kind of on-demand. I don’t teach a huge amount. Just from a time constraint, really.” Her plate is pretty full. In addition to painting and working in London – not to mention family – she’s also a member of a band that performs locally. She sings and plays banjo and ukulele. “We play

“Licorice Fern Art Box” by Maureen ReillyBattersea by Night

Across the Rooftops to St. Paul’s


folk and country – a lot of American mu-sic, actually. It’s great fun. Really, really good fun.” Maybe there’s a jam session with the Bottom Boys in her future.

She’s inspired, obviously by the natural world. Her favorite color is orange but she says, “I paint with anything and every-thing. The things I enjoy painting the most are the natural world – flora, fauna, and landscape.”

Will she be adding any other landscapes to her repertoire? While she and her husband don’t travel a whole lot, Stepha-nie says that they do try to travel abroad at least once a year. “I’ve got a camper van. We like to tour around Europe in that.” They will celebrate their 25th wedding anniversary this year and will travel to beautiful Venice, Italy – land of gondolas, colorful waterways and Pal-ladian architecture. She says of Venice, “That’s somewhere I’ve always wanted to go. I’m hoping to take lots and lots of

photographs there that I can paint from when I get back. I really look forward to it.” Perhaps the color of her landscapes will change to blue and pink? It will be intrigu-ing to see how she decides to interpret the watery landscape.

When asked what gets her out of bed she responds, “I suppose I just like to make the most of everyday. My philosophy is always take every opportunity that comes your way. Grab it with both hands and enjoy it. I just go for it.”

Living in a wonderful landscape can be quite motivating. Her favorite poem by William Henry Davies, “What is This Life if Full of Care?” is a statement of her philoso-phy and painting:

“I think it sums up why I like painting the natural world and what I’d like to communi-cate to my viewer.”

Visit http://www.stephaniegay.co.uk.

The Cobb from Langmoor Gardens

Stephanie at work

The Thames From Richmond Hill, Stephanie Gay

SILKWORM (ISSN 2162-8505) is the quarterly magazine of SPIN -- Silk Painters International -- a nonprofit organization of silk artists, painters, practitioners, and educators. SPIN provides its members opportunities to network with kin-dred spirits and to grow through workshops, conferences, juried competitions, and gallery exhibitions. Material contained in The Silkworm belongs exclusively to The Silkworm and/or the artist. Do not reprint without written permission.

SILKWORMP.O. Box 585, Eastpoint, FL 32328, USA

Silk Painters Internationalwww.silkpainters.orgspin

SILKWORM - Silk Paintersment of silk from raising silkworms to weaving these magical fibers into a...

Documents

Transcript of SILKWORM - Silk Paintersment of silk from raising silkworms to weaving these magical fibers into a...