A few weeks ago I mentioned in an email newsletter I would the story of why I am painting and making floral arrangements with sola wood flowers. Today is that day.
It might seem like a strange leap to traverse a great divide between 1) creating knitting patterns and hand dye/painting gorgeous yarn for knitting, and 2) hand painting sola "wood" flowers (aka "forever flowers) and making gorgeous floral arrangements and bouquets with the flowers I have painted.
For me, there isn't actually a divide between these two realities. You see, it is all about color.
The reason we named out business "Lucky Violet Color Co" rather than something like "Lucky Violet Fiber Co" is because our fundamental passion and craftsmanship is color.
I was a fine art painter for many years before I ever tried my hand at dyeing yarn. As a painter I kept my paint supplies simple, only keeping a limited number of watercolor or oil paint colors in my "tool box". With those colors, I could mix any color I needed for my works of art.
My story actually begins much earlier even, many years before I ever created my first watercolor painting.
It began on a walk with my boyfriend when I was about nineteen years old (quite some time ago). He was a talented four-color press operator, and as we were walking along he looked up at the lovely colors in the just after sunset evening sky. He pointed to a particular soft, purplish color in some wispy clouds and said that when he looked at that color he didn't just see the color, he also saw what colors he would use to make that color.
That his words stayed with me always, even long after our relationship had ended.
Years later I had a very spiritual experience (I am sure I wrote about this in the early days of my blog) during a time when I was doing volunteer work in a literacy project in the inner city in Los Angeles following the L.A. riots. During that time I suddenly realized that I am an artist, but that I had inadvertently squashed that part of myself when I was a child.
Following that realization I started drawing and then I started painting in watercolor and taught myself how to correctly mix simple colors in order to make more complicated and nuanced colors. My boyfriend's words danced through my mind about looking at a color and knowing what colors to combine to make that color.
Whenever I worked on a painting, when I needed a color, I would look at it and think to myself, "What colors make that color?" Not meaning to sound full of myself, but I became quite good at figuring out how to mix just the right color. Color became my specialty, and my love.
Fast forward to many, many years later when I was living on this farm, designing and publishing knitting patterns. My daughter wanted very much for us to start dyeing our own yarn in colors we desired (she is masterful with color combinations) so we gave it a try.
One thing led to another and before I knew it we were dyeing and hand painting yarn and selling it online. Though we both were dedicated fiber fiends, color was the more fundamental passion we both shared: hers is an ability to see and arrange amazing color combinations and mine is this ability I have developed over many years to create any color I see.
This brings me to flowers.
I love knitting, and I love yarn and all fibers really, and I am passionate about color.
What I also love in my core is flowers. When I see beautiful flowers and I look at their colors, textures, lines, and forms ... oh, man I am smitten to the point of having my breath taken away. Sometimes their sheer grace and beauty makes me cry.
Living on a farm I have an opportunity to find and grow flowers that I didn't really have to such a degree while living in Southern California.