Welcome!

This body of work began sometime in the mid 1990's, as an experiment, seeing if I could adhere a dress to a canvas and create a painting over all the textures. "Dress painting" is a term I came up with to explain these when I simply couldn't think of anything better. Over the years they have evolved, with new elements of collage being added. Dress patterns, photographs, and embroidery all appear from time to time, as well as lino block prints, rubber stamps and gold leaf. I will use this space to explore the beginnings of this series, as well as showing my latest work. If the piece is available for sale you'll find the price at the bottom. Free shipping in the U.S. Contact me at kallencole@aol.com to purchase.

Would you like to see my full website? Head over to KathrineAllenColeman.com

Thursday, June 17, 2010

Ideas

A question I hear over and over at art shows is "how do you come up with all these ideas?" It always sort of takes my by surprise, because I guess I never think I have enough. I am always building piles of new ideas, in my head, in my sketchbook, on scraps of paper beside the bed. They come in the form of photographs, scribbled notes, random sketches.

Walking the familiar route from studio to kitchen this past winter the buds on my dogwood tree caught my eye.



The contrast is what caught me, they tell you in art school that the human eye registers contrast between light and dark faster than any other aspect, even bright colors.

So I went in to grab the camera and made a few shots. All the while little birds were out fluttering in the chilly air. So here I was out shivering in the cold, while they were out doing whatever little birds do. And, well, I can't carry on with this thought much further without sounding like a complete nut. Suffice it to say I must have been heavily influenced by Disney's Dr. Doolittle as a child, I wish from the bottom of my heart that I could talk to these little creatures. In fact I do talk to them, all forms of animals, lizards, dogs, frogs, birds, even bugs on occasion, so I guess what I really wish is that they could understand, or even talk back!

So as I watched the birds, it dawned on me one was gathering bits for a nest. And I was simply cheering her on, "attagirl" as my father would say.




This is the second I've done like this, the earlier one can be seen a page or so back in this blog. The bird is a pine warbler, not the same as the little brown bird that was building it's nest, but a later visitor. And who knows, this may be a male, being such a bright yellow, but I'm still going with "attagirl." And if you need to see it, I have my artistic licence in my wallet somewhere!

Attagirl is 24" square and has sold!

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