Artist Pamela Hunt Lee: Artists' Materials, Part 3

Friday, May 22, 2015

Artists' Materials, Part 3

Did I Say UNEXPECTED?

This is the third, and last, post about the current work on my easel.

An unexpected visitor walked into my studio with hands behind his back. Hello, hello, the greetings went back and forth and then, from out behind his back, he produced a fabulous feather telling me it was a gift. An unexpected treasure, and one that came into the work area at a time when I was open to making changes in the current work.

The gift feather

Knowing this fabulous feather needed to be incorporated into my design I started placing it all over the canvas and remembered a bag of feathers in one of my nearby drawers. The feathers came out and they too were placed in various areas of the canvas but settled in specific areas. An unexpected addition to the canvas.

Small feathers added to the canvas.

After the addition of the small feathers.

My artist's intuition started to speak, telling me I needed to wrap some of the hair tendrils with yarn or string, something that would be black in color and could hold the larger feather. An unexpected trip to a local yarn store and the unexpected wandering up and down the isles allowing myself to look and grab what appealed to me led me to select the three materials shown in the photo below.

Three materials purchased at the yarn store.

Little did I realize that one of these yarns would allow me to shred it into big, pouffy, fluffs....much like the ends of the mud slathered hair of the Himba women (do you remember the Himba women pictured in the last couple of posts to this blog?). Another unexpected situation, and one that brought a great deal of excitement to the studio as well as a big smile.

You recall my talk of Shirley Moore and her book You Are So You and her belief that we should all be open to unexpected situations that will bring delight. She is also recently talking about how writers inspire artists and how artists inspire writers. This work I am creating is an example of both situations, inspiration to be open to the unexpected provided by a writer to an artist.

The yarn pouffs.

More and more was added to the canvas. More yarn, more feathers, dots and dashes of paint. All of this unexpected. All in a bit of a furious frenzy which made me loose track of time and forget about the camera. Sorry, there's a gap in the photos showing progression of this work. It got crazy in the studio!

Paint dots and dashes.

So cut to the final, finished work. No in between photos. Inspired by Moore's ideas to embrace the unexpected and the Himba women covering themselves in mud from a riverbank, creating new identities, this is the fourth work in my series, Hidden Identities, and is titled Riverbank Identity.