Things I Think About, II

“Black and white are absolute… expressing the most delicate vibration, the most profound tranquility, and unlimited profundity.” -Shiko Munakata

Things I Think About, II
encaustic mixed media
12×12 inches

…and then there all the different shades of white and cream that pull me too.

After I completed Things I Think About I knew that I wanted to create some paintings based on it, but just the top part. And so I began to work on this one. My favorite part of the whole piece is the fact that the bowl shape on the top right is actually from a drawing of a beet from an old farmer’s almanac. I just cropped it down to look bowl-like. There are a couple things here that I did that I would like to explore further in the future. This detail is one of them:

detail of thread and ink intermingling

There’s several sewn bits in this piece as well. Sewing, stitches and thread have long been appearing in my work- I can’t even remember when the first time was. But it was already in place when I created my first body of work about my pregnancy and becoming a mother back in 2007. So many personal metaphors tied to thread and sewing. All those are being held by the thread in this piece, as well as a new one. I wrote recently about how each painting leads to another, one thought births another. That was going through my head while I was incorporating the pieces of thread in this collaged piece.

“The act of sewing is a process of emotional repair.” -Louise Bourgeois