Cover Her Head

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[gallery ids=”52435496,52435495,52435494,52435493,52435492,52435491,52435490″Safety in numbers…….Madness of the Mob……All for one, one for All……the Sisterhood

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looking to relax my portrait sketching by using various different media and techniques and studying other portraits that convey the …..pain, tension, defiance I am trying to achieve.
Marlene Dumas’ exhibition at Tate Modern was very stimulating in the minimal brushes strokes and black and white tones….powerful sorrow. Francis Bacon distortions create discomfort in viewer and strange connection with portrait as if contradictions inherent in being human are made physical. Bright scarlet background adds to discomfort somehow doesn’t cheer, but acid colour reverberates.
Made mono-print on fabric to make me looser. Cut lino print, splashed white paint on grey linen, printed portrait which I then doodled with stitch. Adding the black back stitches was more successful than I expected but don’t really know how to develop, tightened and contrasted the tones…….maybe a bigger portrait……maybe a crowd…..army

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Lino print of strong woman, without armour/ but vulnerable because she is without armour……her body is her vulnerability? Want to develop but not sure how. tempted to reprint in a line of aggressive/assertive figures on fabric and stitch Rules of Engagement over it…….Give each woman a helmet? Ai Wei Wei has wall paper with guns and birdies……is giving a woman a gun a good move/ a female penis. men have a penis but still need a gun……

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Agnes’s tiny jacket is packed away in a box in the archives of the Heidelberg museum, much like Agnes was packed away into the psychiatric system. Her box probably has a number, I didn’t think to ask. Agnes certainly had a number 583. She embroidered it repeatedly on her clothes to make sure they came back to her from the laundry. I could see the reason for her anxiety as there were 2 Agnes Richter;
‘s in the asylum. I wondered about the other Agnes, she presumably didn’t stitch, she didn’t leave her mark. Making a mark. Stitching is a way of MAKING A MARK. Making marks is was we do when we paint, draw, MAKE anything. We interact with the time space continuum and when we move on our mark is still there.
Words can leave a mark without making a mark. Sticks and stones is wrong, words can hurt. I am clinging to the wreckage of this thought to steer it round to women need/use armour to protect themselves.
Agnes made armour from her clothes, she stitched on the inside I discovered, so the outside of the body part is indecipherable, but the sleeves are stitched on the outside, the 583 is in red.Red for danger, give me back my armour, I need it, it is mine, it is me.