Wordplay 2 :: Bloom

Can I just say that this Wordplay day is made so much better with the experiences of meeting both of my Wordplay ladies in the span of the last week? It is.

Bloom. There were just so many directions I felt like I could take this, comfortably. The ideas swirled in my head when I got the word from Jen. One of my very first influences as a painter was Georgia O’Keeffe and her blooms. And if it isn’t blatently obvious, I feel the most comfortable photographing flora and fauna, I love the abstract and sensual qualities that can be found within the seemingly infinite array of blooms in the world. And in late spring/early summer, they are everywhere. Begging me to be inspired by them. Working their way into my Meditate series (which will resume shortly) almost every week. And maybe that is where my challenge was hidden, in the need to narrow down, to simplify, and to do it differently than I have done it before.

Pink. That is where I started. I’ve been muddling around with little color field paintings lately, ever since gossamer. And although blooms come in every color in the spectrum, pink is this color that almost always whispers “flower” to me. So I felt it was a fitting place to jump from. I did a 12″x12″ color field painting in pink, with some orangey/mango mixed in, in the style that I have been working. I mixed everything on the canvas, pushing paint around, trying to find my balance. And then I added some faint pebble shapes. The bloom is sewn freeform from some pink fabric and natural muslin, then dyed slightly with some strawberry leftovers from the farmer’s market, and finally sealed (sort of) with matte gel medium to give it some stiffness and volume.

I wanted this to be a painting, but also a bit sculptural, in the same way that the threads were in gossamer. Overall, I am pleased with it. But I don’t love it. It’s funny, because at the outset, I was all rarin’ to go and I did the painting part a couple of weeks after I got the word. But then I got busy with a yellow quilt and a vacation, and conceptually, I wasn’t as inspired with it anymore. I have to say, I don’t feel that I put alot of conceptualism into this piece. Usually, I do alot of brainstorming and writing for my design, but not as much for painting. Design is communication, and painting is more of a visceral, in the moment thing for me. This project seemed to flow through me, first as deep immediate inspiration, and then into the sculptural product that it is now. Now, seeing Erin’s and Emily’s interpretations of bloom, a little bit of me wishes that I had a more conceptual viewpoint in my piece. But I don’t. Not this time. I do feel that it pushed me in a way that I wouldn’t expect for a word like bloom. With all of the ways that bloom comes into my creative life, this is different. And for that, I feel successful.