In order to achieve results you can be proud of you need to seek guidance. It is phenomenal what you can learn from others, and so quickly, when it seemingly takes forever to do it on your own. On this particular scarf the canvas was pre-lined and all I needed to do was to colour the square by dye and brush. But it was not that simple to do, and a lot of the little tricks I learnt came from Sylvia Riley, a textiles artist based in Sydney. I will tell you more about her later, in the meantime, enjoy the colours which flow through to both sides of the silk. This is the world of dyes and the reason why digital printing will never come close to hand-painting and screen printing. What you are seeing here is the reverse or underside of the cloth, the brightness and colour is even more brilliant on the other side.
Within the realm of dyeing and painting on textiles there are many disciplines. Next week I will sit down to tell you more about them. Some of the arts I have learnt about are Shibori, Batik, Dye And Discharge, Tie Dye, Devore, Hand-Painting, Felting and Screen Printing. For those of you wanting to learn more about the Australian textiles design scene, you can log onto the ATASDA website (Australian Textiles And Surface Design Association).
Strangely, as I sipped my instant coffee whilst chatting with Sylvia, I was informed that contrary to my opinion that 'nobody works on silk here', I was indeed not correct. Sylvia explained to me that there was a strong movement in silk painting 20 years ago but that the movement mostly died off as hobby and craft people moved to other disciplines but that it still survives although it is scattered across the country and fragmented by disciplines. It seems such a shame that there should be so few people actively working in silk in Australia as the quality of finish I achieved in just a few spare hours one late afternoon this week completely outshines any of the printing finishes I have been able to source from Italy.
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