The art of Zeke and Michelangelo

This morning I read an extract from a text by Alain, (French philosopher, 1868-1951) where he said that often it is during the execution of a project that the artist makes discoveries which serve her vision. The artist becomes a spectator to her own work in progress. She recognizes the challenges her vision presents and she adjusts accordingly. It is at this point the work takes on its originality and distinctive quality.

My eyes wandered over to a drawing by Zeke, my husband's grandson, which was pinned to my billboard. He was four at the time and was experimenting with the colours of a new box of crayons. Quite spontaneously he drew the shape of an ungainly, uncrested bird, stood back from it momentarily, and then added vertical lines to the body and filled in each band with a different colour. Look Kathy, he said, it's a rainbow. He signed his name to the drawing. We called it Zeke's Rainbow Bird.

A couple of weeks ago, Zeke and his family came on vacation with us. Each morning, I would embroider in the garden as the children played. Invariably Zeke would come and watch me work. I reminded him of his Rainbow Bird and told him that when he visited in May I could prepare a canvas for him so he could transcribe the drawing in thread. He was excited by the idea and as he ran off back to his toys, he shouted back at me that he would like me to add a crest.

So this week, I set about designing something for 6 year-old fingers; large holes, thick thread, bright colours, simple technique. As I worked the test piece, on a smaller canvas, I wanted to create the effect of feathers in the tail. My first idea was to make a chequerboard with two colours. I had finished the lighter colour and set the project aside with the idea that the next day I would fill in the spaces with a darker colour. But when I viewed the project with fresh eyes the following morning, I realized that the tail in its unfinished state had already the feathery effect that I was looking for.

I had an immediate albeit very elemental example of Alain's idea of discovery while working. I chuckled at the thought that even at this childlike level, some basic ideas are common to all creative works. In this small way, Zeke's drawing echoed the work of Michelangelo...

Silk work

To carry on with my post earlier today, given that I have lots of time to enjoy my embroidery without the usual constraints of the usual rhythm of a day at home, I have also started a more difficult silk piece. The design is inspired by an early 18th watercolour sample by Anna Maria Garthwaite as a suggestion for a custom order at the silk weaving mills of the Soieries de Lyon. The flower forms of the original painting are exquisite and a great challenge to try to transform the painted stylized forms into surface embroidery on fine linen.

I am working on optic white Belgian linen with Piper's 90 denier silk floss. As you can see from the second photo, the thread is not much thicker than a hair and I like to work with just one thread.

I have chosen a palette of vegetable dye colours, ambers, moss greens, and some indigo blues. I'll add a photo of the colour selection tomorrow.

This project is a pleasing change from the cross stitch I am doing simultaneously. One gives respite from the other.

And I even have a third project underway which I keep in my travel bag which comes on the plane with me.. maybe tomorrow I'll post that project and why I have no excuse to keep my fingers busy wherever I happen to be.



I love to keep busy and particular like to have a way to measure the passage of time. Embroidery provides this measure in a very tangible way and this blog helps also. Thanks for reading, loyal followers.