Saturday, March 29, 2008

Illustration Friday: Homage


I have loved the Illustration Friday site and idea for a long time, and have intended to participate... sometime in the future. I do see myself as primarily an illustrator - a teller of visual stories. My stories just happen to be woven as tapestries.

Well, this week's topic on IF is "homage," so I decided the time had come to participate. I have woven two tapestries that are in homage to Vincent Van Gogh. The first one was the one below, "Lust for Life," which was woven when my first son was in a high school humanities class, and they were studying Van Gogh. The second one, "Starry Night in Western Colorado," was woven when my youngest son was in the same class a few years later. They are both illustrations of a number of things; my admiration of Van Gogh, my excitement at sharing my favorite artist with my sons, and events of our lives together at that time. My oldest son had planted sunflowers that year, so the sunflowers out our kitchen window seemed appropriate. And the starry night was in reference to the comets that we were watching cross the heavens together (Halley's, Hale Bopp, and Hyakutake) above the Colorado National Monument.

5 comments:

helen said...

This is beautiful work.

Lucy Autrey Wilson said...

Really nice!

Anonymous said...

Great work!

Anonymous said...

The Starry Night piece has a beautiful, almost otherworldly, haunting quality to it. Both pieces are fitting tribute to Van Gogh.

Nice work!

K Spoering said...

Thank you, Helen, Lacy, Nicole, Sycla, and all who have visited from Illustration Friday! Sycla, I think that 'otherworldly' quality you see is because of the medium, handwoven tapestry. It always affects me that way, too. There is nothing else that has the look of a tapestry.

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