Many years ago I studied traditional and contemporary textile surface design in Japan.  I often used shibori dyeing techniques in my work – both in wearable art and wall pieces.  Some of these works are featured in the Japan pages of the nomad collection.

ebbing : Leigh
900 x 550: arashi shibori, stitching, canvas, washi, silk cords, found object

In my notes for the piece above, I wrote:
I spent the winter of 1987 in a sleepy village called Leigh on the Pacific Coast.  The cottage overlooked the harbour where small fishing boats and yachts would anchor, and the water view reached over to Little Barrier Island.  The pattern produced by the arashi process brings to mind the ripples on the tide as well as the patterns left in the sand by the ebbing tide.

Years later I was fossicking through fabric scraps and came upon some more bits of the arashi shibori cloth I’d dyed during those years.

I loved the way the indigo dye flowed in softly graduated tones from dark to light.

I’d been painting with acrylics, layering them on textured canvas in a technique I call making love with light (thank you Daido Loori, Roshi).  I decided to transfer the arashi patterns to canvas and play with light on them, the way light plays on the surface of water. And that’s how the aquascape series was born.

aquascapes

Hampshire and Cumbria, England
Sizes vary
Acrylic and pastel on textured canvas