My Florida Home

This is a painting I have been working on lately. I am not a painter; mostly I work in fabrics as an idiosyncratic quilter. But I wanted to make some sort of record of the buildings on this place - beyond cypress swamps and vegetable gardens.

Beginning with a vision of the main house on a four by five foot canvass, not stretched or sized, I had to run out of my studio and up the road every so often to check how this house looks. No photographs. It began to tell me what to do. Yes, lay down some basic paint, remember the bones of that cracker architecture. For no particular reason I picked the last of the giant orange cosmos blossoms and dried them flat under heavy books.

It became clear to me that I would include night and day and every season. So there are fireflies and oranges, butterflies and blooming crape myrtle, sunshine and moonlight. And so why not a lovely alligator, (a photo I took), cows on the lawn,(fabric) and a huge barred owl (a photo from Audubon magazine)? Around this time I began adding fabric pieces here and there. I tried glueing on some Spanish moss - not successful. But the cosmos blossoms were dry and still bright and easily glued to the trees. Milkweed fluff worked well, though it stuck to my hands for hours and I felt like a cocker spaniel.

My workspace has bins of 'stuff' I collect (because who knows when it will find a purpose?) and some of this found a home on the canvass.

And I kept on painting. One night I spoke with my grandson in college. He was excited to show me in a text the art work he had just completed and hung in a hallway. We discussed materials, glues, the creative process and celebrated each other. He told me about the possibilities in bubble wrap!  Which is perfect for moonbeams, though tricky to securely glue down.

So, this is a work in progress and maybe the harbinger of a new art form for me. I am thinking of incorporating some words into this painting, perhaps Emily Dickinson..
We have a dead satellite receiver on the front lawn (not pictured in my painting) and I am not chopping it down because when my grandson comes for his holiday visit I am hoping that we two can construct a new and wonderful sculpture. I am saving all the bubble wrap from Amazon and the discarded turkey feathers I find in the woods, and maybe one of my birder friends will pass along some owl pellets.