{"id":301,"date":"2016-06-07T22:03:24","date_gmt":"2016-06-07T22:03:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.emmafrith.co.uk\/blog\/?p=301"},"modified":"2016-06-07T22:03:24","modified_gmt":"2016-06-07T22:03:24","slug":"dunstanburgh-view-project-in-pictures","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.emmafrith.co.uk\/blog\/?p=301","title":{"rendered":"Dunstanburgh View project in pictures"},"content":{"rendered":"

You will have gathered from the build up that I was not sure how I would get on with canvas work. \u00a0in the event, it turned out to be a very surprising genre for several reasons. \u00a0Firstly, the amount of time it took was astronomical. \u00a0I am not a fast worker at the best of times, but canvas stitches took the biscuit. \u00a0It was a little bit like an oil painting, in that all of the colours and textures had to be created with threads and fibres. \u00a0I used stranded cottons, coton a broder, rayon embroidery thread, twisted silk, floss silk, braided silk, and crewel wool in various colours and combinations to try to replicate the textures and colours in the picture. \u00a0As this is a favourite spot of ours, I was very familiar with the place, which almost paralysed me… It was as if I could not bring myself to approximate anything, my perfectionism was in full swing. \u00a0And with canvas work, perfectionism is not necessarily a good thing. \u00a0Really good canvas work is about finding the essence and suggesting detail in texture, but my imagination was half ‘on location’, on the cliff top, listening to kittiwakes and skylarks and watching the sea pinks toss in the breeze. \u00a0A little more detatchment would have been liberating. \u00a0The second thing about canvas work that surprised me was actually how much depth and movement could be dragged (sometimes kicking and screaming) from a two dimensional grid. \u00a0The last thing that surprised me was my reaction to the piece. \u00a0I usually fall in love with\u00a0any given discipline as I work, but I never fell in love with this. \u00a0It was a struggle. \u00a0and at the end, when I would normally mourn the passing of a project, I just felt relief. \u00a0I wasn’t sure if I liked the finished piece even. \u00a0But strangely enough, a few months down the line, I looked at it agin before handing it in, and suddenly bonded with it in a way I hadn’t whilst I was working. \u00a0I think it achieved its aim – to place the viewer into the landscape. \u00a0Can you hear the kittiwakes? \u00a0I hope so!<\/p>\n

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PS – The ninja. \u00a0As I nearly finished (and possibly was getting slightly hysterical) a boulder and two thrift flowers suddenly looked like a ninja hiding behind a bush. \u00a0once seen, cannot be unseen!<\/p>\n