Project C, § 2: Wrapping it up

I let my painting sit for about a week while I worked on my sewing project. Somehow the sewing project took over and I felt I needed to get it out of my system.

Well. Now it's out.

With the time I had remaining before the hanging of the show, I completed the painting, Secrets Untold. The theme came to mind within the first 10 minutes of my beginning the painting the week before, and a poem within the first 15 minutes of that same moment.

I used straight color from the paint tubes Phthalo Green (blue shade), French Ultramarine, and Burnt Umber (all Artisan brand water mixable oil color) to create shades of almost-black on the remaining yellow of the canvas. I was no longer satisfied with the texture of the stippling and chose the flowing texture of the ribbons above.

Once the painting was complete, I moved on to paper boats. The poem suggested secrets being like ships sailing to a destination... hence the boats. I wrote down secrets of my own--one on each square of paper--and made a boat out of each square.


I initially made 11 ships but chose to use only 10 for space and aesthetics.


Next began the stringing process. This was interesting for me because I had the canvas propped on top of two chairs, facing up towards the ceiling fan, while I sat beneath it marking the places where the string was to be drawn through. It reminded me of marking planets in a system, or moons around the planet.

The little square in the middle of the circle is a piece of tape keeping the string in place while I measure it for length. Since the strings were placed at various points in a spiral coming from the circle, but were temporarily hanging off the same side of the painting while I measured, I had to keep picking up the canvas and flipping it over to eye where the boats were in relation to one another and see if strings needed to be longer or shorter.

The end result from below:


You can't really tell from this angle, but each ship from the center of the circle is a bit lower than the other, creating a spiral effect. The one farthest away is the lowest one, the one in the center is the shortest.

*****
In retrospect, I realize that the secret that meant the very most to me--and the first one I made--did not make it onto the final piece. Makes me sad actually, regardless of whether it will ever actually be read.

The image of the boats making a spiral remind me of a shell... something so fragile yet often stands the test of time...

...like a secret.