Thru fading light of evening
Mist rises from the Atchafalaya.
Stock-still Blue Heron
waits for opportunity
and one last morsel.
From spanish moss cypress groves
down to plains of spartina,
Ghosts of the Mississippi
Ebb and flow with rain and time.
-K. Hammon
This piece is a little different than others I’ve done. The inspiration comes from panel quilts where the center has a fairly realistic rendering of a scene. Around it, quilt blocks or other fabric patterns are arranged as part of the overall design. A few years ago I saw a large one with a highly stylized Heron in a quilt shop in Arcade, NY. At the time, I thought I might paint a bird on fabric as part of a large tapestry. I’ve got a few smaller seasonal fabric tapestries with painted birds in progress; my respectful version of a kakejiku.
For my center “panel” I used a piece of primed acrylic paper. I wanted to try something different other than a map, but still have map segments as part of the completed piece. Though I will revisit this piece and do another with a different map – perhaps a topographic – as the center panel. Regardless, a Blue Heron was and will be my preference for this piece as well as it’s future cousin. During late-summer/autumn, I’d take walks after dropping my daughter off at her art class. I’d regularly see a Heron I dubbed Henry hunting along the creek. I was able to get several photos late one evening with a very low sun angle and used these as reference. I painted the background a dark Payne’s Gray which helped capture the Heron in that dramatic light. At a friend’s suggestion (thanks Rob) I added some lily pads for depth and scale.
The pattern to employ proved difficult. I spent as much time pondering the quilt pattern to use as I did on the map. Well…almost…I decided early to use Louisiana in some form, but had several maps of Louisiana, Mississippi and Arkansas to choose from. 12 X 16 is an unusual size to try to shoehorn square blocks onto so I solved the dilemma with a pattern called ombre. Ombre is gradient shading but isn’t as smooth as sombre. My intent was to try to transition from dark to light across 16 strips of map. I wanted it almost like a foggy river bottom with a more distinct foreground followed by the transition thru lights. After affixing the strips, I bordered the heron and the edge of the piece with map reference markers stained in cadmium yellow. It felt like it needed the bordering and only seemed done with them.
A note about the verse at the top. I ‘m working thru another book by Basho (The Narrow Road to the Deep North and Other Travel Sketches) so you can see the influence of Japanse poetry. Early Japanese poetry forms fit expressions about nature. This one is like the waka form with an extra two sets of 7 syllables.
