silk painting

untitled – silk banner

| miriam louisa simons

textile | transformation
Hampshire, England

It often happened during the years when I was teaching art at Brockwood Park School in Hampshire, England, that my own artwork had its origin in classroom activities.

My keen group of students were learning how to paint on silk and other fibers as part of a fiber art program. They also wanted to explore off-loom weaving processes.

I had a wonderful stash of painted silk color samples from studio experiments in earlier days, and laminated them onto canvas to make ribbon strips. In the attic I found a discarded window blind made of narrow pieces of wood – these were painted using light-reflective acrylics.

 

Wonderingmind Studio: Miriam Louisa Simons, Silk Banner

 

The wooden sticks and the silk ribbons came together in a pattern discovered in one of the texts we studied – it’s a very old Chinese pattern symbolizing the ebb and flow of the Tao.

 

Wonderingmind Studio: Miriam Louisa Simons, Silk Banner - detail

A closer look.

The weaving was eventually mounted on a length of painted bamboo matting.
1780 x 650
painting on silk, off-loom weaving
silk Habotai, canvas, wooden sticks,
acrylic paints, fiber-reactive dyes

nomad collection: England

ankida

| miriam louisa simons

textile and transformation
Australia

 

Wonderingmind Studio: Miriam Louisa Simons - Ankida. Painting on silk.

 

Silk Habotai, card, textured wood panel, mosquito netting, woven metal fragment, acrylic paints, fiber-reactive dyes
Painting on silk, assemblage
643 x 312

This piece illustrates a poem:

mountains of green
mountains of blue arise:
gratitude wells up
and fills my eyes

When I moved from Europe to tropical Queensland to care for my frail aged parents in their last chapter, I would sometimes take respite time at Ankida, a rainforest sanctuary in the Gold Coast hinterland. I felt like a Zen hermit tucked away in a grass hut amongst mountains that rolled westward for ever. It was a good place for poetic ramblings and painting; I felt blessed beyond words.

18.10.12

| miriam louisa simons

 

daily details 18.10.12 - miriam louisa simons

 

painted silk Habotai, textured card, acrylic paint, fragment of steel gauze

The noun of self becomes a verb.
This flashpoint of creation in the present moment is where work and play merge.

– Stephen Nachmanovitch

07.10.12

| miriam louisa simons

 

daily details 07.10.12

 

painted silk Habotai, textured card, fiber reactive dyes

The only real experiences in life [are] those lived with a virgin sensibility
– so that we only hear a tone once, only see a color once,
see, hear, touch, taste and smell everything but once, the first time.

All life is but an echo of our first sensations,
and we build up our consciousness, our whole mental life
by variations and combinations of these elementary sensations.

– Herbert Read, The Innocent Eye