In Times Gone By - Mixed Media
Is it just me or do other folk spend time agonising over the best way to proceed with a piece of artwork? The woodblock print on vintage paper had been on the drying rack for days, well past its dry-by-time. I’d look at it, knowing I wanted to do something more with it, but what and how was driving me in mental circles.
I had the print mind-marked for a mixed media piece, but a constructive how-to was proving elusive. Rather than become dizzy from the thinking roundabout, I turned to another project, an accordion book incorporating hand carved ‘stamps’. This one, too, was giving me conniptions, as both projects were to go into the Easter Art and Craft Show.
While ruminating over the book, the Idea Fairy gave me a whack on the head. The mixed media piece above is the result.
Collaging a background with an eighties pattern sheet from a Burda magazine, along with some sections of embroidery transfer sheets, from the seventies, adding the print – machine from the early nineteen hundreds and fashions from the forties – and embellishing the work with leafy lace from the nineties, and some gorgeous old trim from around the thirties, I now have a time capsule for what was once classed as the ‘gentle arts’.
By turning my mind, and hands, to an unrelated project, I went from a baffling quandary to a piece of artwork I’m pleased with. Life and art-making can be like that some days. Now, it’s back to the book. Just hope I don’t have to spend hours doing housework before the Idea Fairy whacks me about that one!