Abstract Emotional Attempt

Still in the midst of my Art for Quilter's class and I'm way behind. I forced myself to do the abstract challenge tonight. I just hope they don't vote me off. (watching too many Project Runway DVDs lately)

We were to use geometric shapes to create an abstract in fabric that represents a feeling or tells an emotional story. How you do that with abstracts? I still don't know. I kept finding myself wanting to paint a full-blown picture of Lucifer in the corner. Ok, now you can guess my "feeling" was not happy! Actually, looking at it on my black blog, it does kinda convey the sorrowful tone I was aiming for! Good times.

My original "emotion" was too ugly to even post so here is the lightened up version: This is about grief and the loss of a loved one. Kind of a snapshot of early grief and pain of loss shooting in. For the longest time you feel as if a spear is stuck in your middle...very deep and it may never come out. Then, the grieving squeezes tears out and the long healing process begins. The blue circle represented the lost love in the beginning but transformed into myself. I wanted to depict the lost one disappearing into oblivion but my skills lack and I wanted to finish and move on. Before I started I kept saying to myself, "Do something pretty and soothing and fun....come on you don't have to go THERE." Then It just wouldn't go away and hey it works, it's done and out.


This is my original sketch. The results are similar but I just couldn't pull my "vision" off since 1) I'll never have enough fabrics 2) I really wanted to get her done and move on from this unhappy place.

My extremely talented instructor
Marilyn Belford
wrote:

This is a strong piece. It is well thought out and the eye moves around the work perfectly. It expresses everything you said, and more. Those red arrows moving in, changing direction and getting smaller, add great depth and suggest the three-dimensional roundness of the circle, as well as the transition to tears. The whole piece evokes a feeling of healing. Nice going! I notice in the lower left some squiggles in red. Is that a compositional ploy (which, by the way, works)? Or a symbol, or letters... or?

But I just had to respond,
could it be....Satan?

I was thrilled she got the "healing" aspect of the piece!