Resonance

My approach to an art piece is usually a psychological or philosophical one. I am trying to convey a thought or concept in a visual way. For this theme of leaving our mark, after much thought I felt that the belief that I wanted to express was that by our very existence we leave a mark. Just as dropping a pebble into a pond causes concentric ripples to flow outward in all directions, our presence also creates ripples of  influence in the world around us.

If we now think of dropping many pebbles into a pond the ripples spread out and begin to overlap thus causing the patterns to merge and change. Similarly although we send out our particular pattern of energy, so do others and these patterns encounter one another and form new patterns. So we may effect change in other people in ways that we will never know but they will also effect changes in us. Thus we build our families, our communities, our societies and our world.

For Buddhists the bohdi leaf is a symbol of the spirit, as Buddha was sitting under a bohdi tree when he reached enlightenment. I have used an abstracted image of a bohdi leaf to represent the spirit and the echo quilting to convey the idea of the energy waves that we emit and receive as we journey through our life.

I have used a technique of layering colours of silk and then slashing down to reveal the under layers to convey the idea that our influence exists on many levels, physical, emotional, intellectual and psychological.

The materials are Indian silk and commercial cotton fabric.