Thursday, March 28, 2013

Storm MOON 3



For our March entry, I was inspired by Spring.  I know, “what a concept”.  But on one of our morning walks in late February, or early March, the birds were putting on an unusually full symphony.  The start of a new season, more light, longer days.  I decided then that if I could make a recording of that symphony and put it in Spot B of our little altars project, that’s what I wanted to do.  Well, after some thought, it seemed like that was a pretty unworkable idea – at least for now.

So I moved to some other approaches to my spring inspiration. For Lou’s box  I knew I wanted a color palette that would transition directly from Halloween to Spring.  I figured that would be a bit difficult, since the starting point was black and orange, and I wanted to end up with spring brights and the greens and yellows of daffodils and new leaves.  I think of spring as being pink and white, light and very bright.  And it looks like Lou has painted her box black.  I ended up with a dark background in watercolor washes, and some watercolor-dyed Japanese papers, and some shiny mica watercolors.  I knew I wanted flowers, so I tore the Japanese papers and layered them.  Then I stitched some (Peg) sequins from Turkey under some magatamas for the center of the flowers, added some acrylic too.

As I was sitting at my beading table stitching the beads on, I thought to myself, not for the first time, that this ended up not looking very spring-like after all. It was dark, and purple, and neutral, and orange, and green.  I’d really studied the colors I chose for going with black and orange, but it didn’t feel like I’d hit “SPRING”.  And then I looked across the room at the tulips sitting there (on the far end of their glory), and saw that I was STARING at the same colors that are in my little altars piece.  So I think I got to Spring after all, and in the process I enlarged my own perception of spring colors.
 Nancy Strahle



3 comments:

  1. Nancy - I love how you thought it so not springy and then the twist at the end. Ha! That happens to me so often. It's reassuring and inspiring to know it happens to others. Just when you think you headed in the best direction, you begin to doubt, but the universe will confirm if we can pay attention, huh? Wait till you see what happened for me... it's on my blog and soon to be here... very similar. Maybe it's the stormy lion/lamb of March's moon. :)

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  2. Beautiful and creative. It's amazing the colors in nature year round. What a great "awakening".

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  3. Wonderful! Absolutely wonderful !!!!

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