Time to name the animals.

                                                                                   TIME.

                                               “Give me the serenity to sit with canvas and wool,

                                                           the courage to keep stitching,

                                                 and I will show you what a difference time can make”.

Luckily I have never found a blank canvas, paper, room or computer screen threatening. There has always been ideas right from my very youngest years and my attention has always been drawn to the visual. Finding things to fill our time is never a problem today, there is always someone keen to beg steal or borrow whatever we have available. Our allotted time is precious to us but also profitable to others. What we choose to do with it is often not straight forward as a living has to be made. Finding free time is often the first step to creation itself and it is often the question people ask when they see one of my stump work embroideries for the first time, “how long does one like that take?”

The rough sketching started for Adam naming the animals with a potentially crowded image but that would work within the medium of woollen stump work tapestry. The foreground would simply be crowded with life and some would indeed be emerging from the ground. Since this is from a time before the fig leaf I felt it prudent as with all other historical images to place one animal strategically in front of Adam. This animal turned out to be a small horse-like creature but before the development of hooves and now only found in fossil form. To give a sense of the process of naming Adam holds aloft that comical little bird the ever popular but now endangered puffin on his left hand. God is in the top right quarter and during the drawing I felt his outstretched hands must be presenting the next creature to be named and it turned out to be in alphabetical order with a python. As usual nothing was written in stone and during the assembly many things would be altered, added or removed. During this constructive process it is important the work out the three dimensional or raised nature of the image and in this respect it is very much like creating a stage set with backdrop and side wings to give depth.

Having completed Adam and the adjoining creatures I drew out the next batch of creature to be stitched on the separate small frame and included in this was the head of God. Faces are always a delicate part of an image and to obtain an expression in wool over a matter of a few square centimetres is not always evident and can significantly change during the padding out process. I had already decided that the bird life would play a major role in adding colour and while the brilliant red flamingo stood to the right before the golden robes of God there would perhaps need to be a counterbalance of colour to the left over and above the striking white horse. Having stitched and stuffed the animals in the lower right corner I found that there was significant room within the central ground into which I would be able to fit a goodly amount of life by raising the horizon and coastline. My aim now was to fill the image with as diverse a mix of wildlife as I could manage. I worked from the foreground back placing animals and birds wherever there was space and with an eye on colour and contrast. With each rise and fall of the needle there is a precision that influences where the next stitch will be placed and while focusing on such a small area I retain a consciousness of the overall picture.

     

As I look at the image before me that has over the weeks been slowly revealed I find myself impressed with the work and the beauty of something that demands such a high input of my time. There seems today to be a tendency for exhibitions and installations to be extra ordinary impressive events on a grand scale that more often than not are one artists idea carried out by a large team of out-workers. The pace of life today is often at a break neck speed and so to catch the eye of the public, critics or press it is assumed that large scale plays an important part. However one must never forget the small gem like icons with an intimacy that pulls you into a magical world.  What I find impressive with my current work and which I hope will impress those who eventually see it on exhibition is that it is the creative hand stitching work of just one person over a three year period.

If you had shown me this work several years ago and told me that I would be doing it I would have said no way but then life and creativity is never a straight forward predestined path.