The Golden Globe

      Over the past few years, I have made important changes regarding the backgrounds in my tapestries. For some time, I have been perplexed and struggled to emphasise the central focal points in the design in relation to the backgrounds. Using my “lozenge shaped” forms I have been able through colour and tonal changes, from light to dark, from contrasts to harmonies and allied to atmospheric like movements to create much added detail and feeling for the narrative. Now I consider that the design as a whole is complete and comprehensive. In the past I have rejected designs on the grounds that the link from the concept to the whole has been tenuous, and not to my aims and objectives.

     My sketch books and writings dating from the early 1980’s are integral to my processes of design. Reviewing and looking back through the pages is important for it often indicates a direction of travel. I take forward ideas and concepts, integrating them into fresh new thinking, and offering greater understanding. My latest piece, entitled “The Golden Globe” is an example of the developmental approach.

      Whilst I was looking through my 2010 sketch book I was taken back to a series of drawings and paintings relating to the environment and especially the role the Sun was playing. This was the year that we spent time in Nepal and the Himalayas and the vast, silent deserts of Namibia. The contrasts were so different but so similar. In the high places of Nepal, the Sun above the peaks gave a tremendous sense of scale and power. From the verdant foothills with the attendant clouds and looking higher we see another world, the summits of the heights where the physical world meets the spiritual world. The Sun in the desert, with its multiple horizons framed against an empty blue sky provides wrap around warmth on a more human scale. Perspectives, depths. and distances play out their game with the human eye.

     Equally the power of the Sun has an effect and influence on all environments. We are  indebted to all its characteristics and properties. It imparts the seasonal changes as:

“On this whirligig of time,

We circle with the seasons.”

       This design was inspired by a series of erode rock formations I photographed and sketched in the Canary Islands. The random nature attracted me and their arrangement is superimposed over the top of the Golden Globe, the Sun. Our world so dominated by the Sun is seen with the backcloth of the dark, deep, unfathomable space. Where the absence of noise is profound that it seems to have its own quality. Whose depths and extents are seemingly limitless and are difficult to comprehend. Within the narrative are the colours and tones of the four elements, air, fire, water, and earth. The forms and structures offer a feeling of movement similar to our rotation around the sun. The rounded shapes are redolent of the continuous process of erosion, of change and transformation. With the strong dominant focal point, the dark mysterious background, with its depth and unknown quality almost adds sound to the tapestry.

      Is it really silent?

      Is there a sense of undulating movement, of vibration?

      Is the sound of silence deafening?