Inspiration - Staffordshire Hoard - start

As I stated in this post, our EquilARTeral group has decided to do our next set of work based on the find in Staffordshire this year. A link to more about the story.

We are taking the step to try mounting the work on gallery wrapped canvas. In order to unify the pieces, we have the same size canvas and we all have painted them the same colour. From there, the work will be our own.

Since I finished Connect-Disconnect, I finally got to start on this work. So, today I painted the canvas with the paint Merete mixed up. It is textured with sand and pebbles, and then dry earth applied on top. For mine, I also embedded bits of a gridded gold mesh, because I am really interested in the idea of digging and what it must have looked like to have so many bits and pieces of gold showing up.

In the post referred to above, there is a link to quite a few photos. But here is another link to photos which actually have a bit of a description of what you are looking at.

I was also struck by the pieces from the hoard which have garnets set in gold. So, you can also see in this photo a start on some pieces reflecting that concept, which I will cut out and work with. I cut portions from the gold mesh and then stitched around them.

I am looking forward to working on this one. I think I may have scattered bits, rather than one piece mounted. I really enjoyed painting the canvas! I might try other aspects of this sort of thing in the future.