Pastitches: Flower Entropy

I haven't been idle, a bit confused yes, but still in activity!

There are so many 'old things' I want to post about, but life goes on quickly and makes it difficult to catch up!

There has also been an event I will post about shortly (Black History Day held at Hendon Library within Black History Month, with the African Cultural Association).

Meanwhile, I have been experimenting with a design that I want to use on a series of garment and accessories and have been wondering how best translate it.

The starting point is some ink experiment for a design exercise with 'line' that I did some time ago. I like the end result though, the colours and the flowing line.

Inkjet print of a coloured ink experiment about 'line'on paper

I have noticed, though, that I tend, or the design tends, or both of us do, to turn the abstract into something flowery.

It looks like there is a' flower entropy' within my work.

I have previously made conscious attempts to go the other way, i.e, from flowers to abstracts, but whether these have been successful or not, I have realised that there is definitely a connection between the two.

Watercolour on WC paper, flowers into abstract

Detail

Detail as above

This is probably partly due to the nature of the medium involved: whereas watercolour tends by its very nature toward dissolution and detachment from materiality, another experiment, that goes back to many many years ago, shows how the connection is still there but in a more material way (the medium was mainly oil paint and pastels on a pastel paper background)

I had pondered in fact, whether to translate the design into a counted thread technique, that would best show the transition between the floral and the abstract line elements, but in the end I decided to use free-style hand embroidery.
So, with hand stitches, thick thread, the use of the circular frame and the addition of some applied organzas, I have steered towards flowery materiality again, leaving the linear behind!

Linear design evolving into flowers with various stitches (including running, chain, feather, whipped running, short and long blanket stitch, stem,) being worked in an embroidery hoop on a calico base painted with Markal paint sticks

Detail

Anyhow this is why I have decided to call this series Flower Entropy, which is probably what my garments and accessories bearing this embroidery will be called