TREE OF LIFE (WAP#22; Istanbul)

I am embarrassed to say that in the 21 years that I have lived in Adelaide (South Australia), I had never been to The Cedars in Hahndorf...until last Friday!!
The Cedars is the former home of Australia's most cherished landscape painter of the 1900's, Sir Hans Heysen.  Onsite a visitor can walk trails to view locations where he captured portraits of exquisite gum trees in the most glorious light.  We also got to see his studio, home & daughter's studio.  What an inspiring treat!  Now that I've been, I want to go again!

But what has this got to do with Istanbul or my weekly art project????????

Inspiration comes from all sorts of stimuli.  Whilst following the tour around his house, I noticed that the floors were covered in the most beautiful Persian rugs.  I wanted more time to explore these as much as his artwork on the walls. 

Of course they reminded me of the rug sellers in Istanbul.  There were so many of them & they ALL wanted to make a sale.  The fact that we weren't wanting to buy rugs because our cat is inclined to shred them, didn't register as a problem to these guys, they kept on trying to sell sell sell! Finally, in an exhibition of Turkish rugs in the Decorative Arts Museum, I was able to enjoy looking without the harassment!

Therefore, it is the Turkish Rug that I chose as my muse for this weeks art project.

I began by returning to my Istanbul sketchbook where I had recorded a number of 'Tree Of Life' designs from the various rugs exhibited. 
My plan was to create a design that included aspects of these sketches, but there was no way that I could incorporate all of the designs I had recorded.  Therefore I chose my favourites & began playing with design ideas.

Because of my love of the 'Prayer Mat' format, I chose to structure my design in that style.

At last, after much drawing & redrawing, I had something I felt comfortable to work with.  It was time to think of colour.

I chose to stick with the blues, reds & golds that are most frequently used in older mats.  My fabric range was a little lacking, so these would just have to do!!

It was time for the cutting back to begin!!

The final result & I am relatively happy with it.
In design terms, I'm not super keen on the curved elements at the top, & if I'd invested more time in the design process, I wouldv'e played around with those some more.  I would love to get my needles & threads out for some stitchery in this piece as well!!
This was fun and has the added pleasure of connecting two inspiring excursions.  I've also just realised...that Hans Heysen was passionate about trees & the fact that I have created this using 'Tree Of Life' designs, is all the more meaningful.