A Present of Family Significance and a new approach.

Here I am again and as promised here is the present that has been received by my very dear cousin in the North of England; this is where most of my family live. It was my mother who moved to the south when she married my Dad, he was very much a Londoner born and bred.

However the significance of this present as I mentioned above is that this represents the home my mother grew up in. Yes a proper Romany bow topped Wagon. My Grand dad was a true Romany you see. I don't mean new age travellers. We are talking about the early part of the last century. My Grandparents were born in the late 1800's Some people would feel ashamed of admitting these kind of roots. I am very proud of my heritage. My mother came through some very tough times, and survived two world wars and even worse the great depression. She taught me how to be a survivor and how to make do and mend. She taught me a lot of things that many today would be grateful to know. So yes, I am proud of being half Romany. Even though I grew up in a house that my mother fought hard to buy for herself. I will never forget my roots.

My cousin said she is so pleased with this, she has it on her wall amongst all the family photos, isn't that wonderful. The front of it sort of represents the idea of looking out from a wagon on to the view of a wagon itself. It took me many hours to make this, it is made from my own hand dyed and hand made felt and all of it is hand embroidered with a lot of hand painted variegated silk.

As usual click on the pictures for a closer view.

This next piece is a new approach for me. This is what I recognise as mixed media; for me anyway. First I made a clay circle, quite small. I made a series of small holes equally spaced around the edge; these can't be seen as the embroidery covers these well. The idea was to create a frame for this pendent so that it would hang nicely. The embroidery is a free hand design/stitch doodle; this is what I might call them in future. I feel that working with very fine silk in this manner is very pleasing. I am planning to make a series of these pendents in different colours; and maybe shapes too. who knows. Well that's it for now folks. Be back soon. Cheers and thanks for dropping by. Tricia x

Back to my roots

Well as we start to eat our way through this seasons growth I began to think of things that I did when I lived in Kent and when I was studying art, oh many moons ago now. Well, I have been walking up and down the garden a lot lately watching the veggies grow, subconsciously, I kept looking at the colour of some of the greens we are growing. I know I have seen them all before but I kept thinking how lovely. Then it reminded me that I once did a whole project based on colour theory using the humble cabbage as a starting point.Some of these greens are not even green in places I know this often happens, I can't tell you why, it's as if some of the larger leaves lose some of the chloraphil and it's almost like when autumn comes, it's usually the larger flatter leaves nearer the base of the plant that turn a beautiful colour.
Even the green ones are beautiful with the light behind them, showing the all the veins in a wonderfully architectural way.

It's when the leaves change from green to yellow and then to red that it fascinates me. Oh how I wish plant dyes were stable. How to reproduce these colours, colours of nature, colours that we can easily overlook if we don't take time to stop.
How beautiful are these?



Ok we know our onions!

yes we grow allsorts, I just love vegetables, but that's me.


we grow flowers too, in the front half, but talking about flowers, I heard somewhere that in the states, they grow runner beans just for decoration, I wonder if this is true, what a waste, they taste so good too.



Our Marrows are on their way, or if I get impatient they will be courgettes.


There was point to this blog, before I got carried away with my veggie pictures. Well, back to my roots is simply symbolic for me, I think as an artist I need to go back to creating and not worrying who it's for. My daughter says I won't compromise but there again she sees things from a business perspective. I don't make good art when I am thinking about who is going to buy it, so instead of trying to please everyone else I am going to be true to my artistic nature and please myself. I am going to study nature and colour and textures and what aesthetically pleases me, if someone buys it great, but if they don't at least I'll like it. so back to my roots means to study, research and enjoy. We'll see what comes of it and time will tell if I was right.

TIF Challenge for April

The TIF Challenge for April is "How do I see change" Well, whether this is good or bad it is debateable but I see change as moving house, not staying in one place as I rarely have. I think that travelling is in the blood. My mothers parents were from Ireland but although my Grand mother was what you would expect from a true Celt, my grandfather's side were romany people. I don't draw very often from my head because I nearly always use symbols in my thought processes but it was a starting place. The wheel is a very strong Romany symbol which is often used by the travellers so it was an obvious choice. I then thought of the people walking besides the wagon and also the idea of putting down or pulling up roots.

I was going to work with Sun dye as this changes the fabric. However, we don't have much sun here in Britain at present and I was not completely happy with the way that all this was going.

Then purely by chance I came across this old photo of my Grand Parents and
my mother. The back ground is, My Grand dad who is sitting in the foreground, his mother came from Spain and they were horse people. My Great Grand dad on that side was a horse doctor and bearing in mind this takes you back many years to the time of the great famine in Ireland, he was quite an important rural visitor as he would travel around all the farms and help to cure the livestock with his herbal cures. They lived in bow top wagons. Well, because of the potatoe famine my Great Grandparents came over to England in the mid 1800's. There have certainly been many changes since their time, there have also been extreme changes even since my mother's time. She was born in a wagon in 1921 around the time of the great depression, times were very hard but they were survivors or I wouldn't be here. The two gents in the rear of the picture I believe were just friends of the family. My Grand dad who is sitting in the front of the picture died just after the picture was taken. I believe he died of the effects of mustard gas he had inhaled during the first world war. My Grand mother is also sitting in the front and my poor mum who looks thoroughly fed up is standing in the picture, she is only 7 years old. I suppose they had to stand still for a while in those days for pictures to be taken. The picture was taken, I believe, because they had just won a race with one of their horses, I think that there is some sort of trophy on the table. Well, this is where my challenge starts:

I have decided to work in monochrome as the original picture is and it seems so appropriate to show yet another change in the way we look at photos today. This piece I have needle felted in natural sheep wool colours.

My idea is to take parts of this picture and place these in the wheel. Look back to see how I get on.