Profile in String
1000mm x 800mm x 50mm (Mixed media)
Click on image for larger version
Click on image for larger version
This artwork has been such a great new adventure for me. It's quite different to all of my previous paintings. It all began with some friends in Postmasburg donated their 'canvasless' stretchers (that is, the wooden frame to which the canvas is usually stapled) to me because they were moving overseas and couldn't take the canvas on the wooden stretcher on board the plane without paying a large sum of money. These stretchers sat in our kitchen for weeks, as I contemplated about what to do with them. It had to be something creative.
Finally, in a moment of brilliance, I thought about suspending one of the smaller ones inside the larger one using string... lots and lots of string. So I set about the task. Got some balls of string and nails from the local paint shop and started my creation in the back garden, just under the wash line. Ahhhh, it was such joy working with my hands in the heat of the Kalahari sun. After using a spanner for a hammer, some nails and 2 blood blisters later, I managed to finish winding and weaving the string around the frames (the nails were used as anchors so that the string would not slip out of place).
The next problem came when I couldn't decide what to do next. The artwork definitely needed some finishing off. I remembered that I had some spare canvases lying around that needed to be remodeled into proper art. I tried my hand at burning the canvas into pieces, but that didn't work out too well. So I resorted to the good ol' pair of scissors. After that it was time to sew. I spent a few long hours sewing the small pieces of painted canvas onto the tangled lines of string, hoping that some sort of image would be able to emerge. And it did!
This is a close-up of the painted canvas pieces attached to the string
I cannot lie. Deciding when to stop was a difficult decision - should I continue or is this enough canvas? Should I add some other element or are the canvas and string enough? Eventually, I decided it was time to put the needle down and walk away.
Now I am ready to embark on finding a new idea for the next piece of art.
I do need to add a side note. In the middle of creating this, my husband and I did move back to Centurion from being in the Northern Cape for 15 months. I completed this in my new temporary studio - which is out on the veranda of my friend, Soon-Jong Kim's farm.
