New Work in Progress -- In Dreams I Climbed the Cliffs

I’m working on another piece in my River series, similar in style to In Dreams I Flew Over the River and In Dreams I Saw the Colors Change.  It’s my interpretation of the experience of hiking up the cliff faces and rock formations that line portions of the Susquehanna River.  The center imagery is built up with needlefelting.  This is done either by hand and by machine, using barbed needles that entangle the fibers of wool and silk textiles. I began by blocking out the basic shapes and colors of my scene, using commercial fabrics and some that I hand painted.

Above is the river portion of the work a bit further along.  The patterned strips have been integrated into the wool base, and I’ve added bits of wood roving and silk threads.

Above is the the woolen cliffs with some silk highlights, and the trees and woods in in progress.  The underlying tree fabric is a sort of crinkled silk that I painted--the texture is fabulous.

Once again I am being very generous and extravagant in my use of silk.  Above is a section that will represent the sky in the finished work. I started with a white silk with woven circles, painted it a sky blue with wispy grey fog highlights, and manipulated it into folds and curves.

As always, thanks for reading and commenting.