Another Detour Through Painting on the Way Back to Stitching

I took another wonderful detour into painting, although this time it was actually a blend of painting and stitch. Katie Pasquini Masopust was

here, at the Hudson River Valley Art Workshops teaching her Stitched Paintings workshop and I got to join in! What a treat. Besides enjoying ANY workshop taught by Katie, this was a chance to learn how she creates her ingenious abstract landscapes and still lives that start out with painted canvases. The process starts out with painting canvas in a palette of color that will suit the landscape or still life you have in mind. The first pass at the painting is a gradated color from light to dark. Then comes the fun of a series of mark making steps to add interest and texture to your painted canvases. These are some of mine in the various stages of painting.

One of the possible composition techniques was to stack and cut through the canvases and then re-assemble them into a non-representational abstract.

This is my landscape with the reference photo to the left of it.

The next steps are to quilt it to a backing (batting optional) and then build a frame, and then finally attach it to the frame and paint the frame edges to complement the painting. I didn't have time to do this part of the process, as I was called away to work at various times during the class, but I've been so inspired by the process and painting in general, that this winter I've set up a tiny painting alcove near my studio where I can have all my paints and supply handy.