The Promise, One off My Artist's Bucket List.

Popping up my pastel painting "The Promise" today, the first scored off my artist's bucket list. No, I'm not thinking of popping off at the moment but hey, lots of the stars I knew from my childhood are long  gone (thinking Prince, Whitney, George Michael here, ... the list is endless!), it does start making you think about your mortality. So without getting more maudlin, here is my pastel painting. 

The Promise, pastel

(A Labour of Love) 

70cm x 80cm

This is my daughter's christening robe from 1910 and her baby shawl knitted by her grandmother. The christening gown was a wish of mine from when I first became pregnant. Ayrshire, where I lived in Scotland, is famous for its Ayrshire Whitework, very fine hand embroidery done on bastiste fabric, usually incorporating flowers, wheat and fine cut work. The history of the craft says that this very fine handwork was created during the Napoleonic Wars at the beginning of the 19th Century, French lace then no longer being available, dying out after 1850 when industrial lace became the order of the day. My mum, a passionate knitter, started on the shawl on the day she heard she was to become a granny, though insisting she would never be a granny, she wanted to be an Oma, the German version of gran. Scottish knitted shawls are supposed to be so fine they pass through a wedding ring. 

Here is a photo of the real thing, although not all hand done whitework, it is very precious to me, even more so because my lovely Dad and I bought it together in Glasgow. I had a tricky pregnancy and he knew that I really wanted an antique robe, to perk me up, so we headed off to the Antiques Village and found this beauty. The purchase was a promise, that everything would turn out OK! 

Painting white objects is tricky, fabric is something that I haven't really done in a while, so I chose Canson Mi-Tientes in dark grey to emphasise the white and to show up the intricacy of the lace! The pastel painting itself is in soft white, lilac and blue pastels and the lace of the shawl in pastel pencil, although coming across as white, there is also pink, turquoise and pale blue! 

Artwork is taking a bit of a backroad to setting up my website, links will follow. Yet another thing to cross off my bucket list, my own website, yey!!!!