Moonlight Garden

moon light garden

It was poet Margaret Bednar who gave me the name for this quilt when she left a comment about it on Instagram.  “like a flower garden in the moonlight” she wrote.

And I knew she was right.  I started making the quilt around the time of the full moon.  I thought of how I could see as if it were daytime, but how the light is so different.  And how the gardens are quieter.  Resting from all the activity of the bright summer sun.

All of that was happen subconsciously.  On the surface I was thinking of  the painter Alma Thomas.  I hadn’t heard of her until I saw a reproduction of one of her painting in The New Yorker.  The painting caught my eye and the article held my attention.

Thomas  looked to the colors in her gardens to inspire her paintings and often imagined what those gardens would look like from the sky.

To me, her abstract color field  paintings, made me think of quilts.  Small individual shapes of color with just enough space between them, like a stone walkway, to make them dance within the canvas.

If I look at my quilt as if I were seeing it from the sky, I can easily imagine it  a garden of flowers, in the moonlight.

Alma Thomas was the first African-American woman to have a solo exhibit at the Whitney Museum in 1972.  She was 81 years old.  She said, “Through color, I have sought to concentrate on beauty and happiness, rather than on man’s inhumanity to man.”

Reminds me of how Mary Oliver chooses to sing the beauty of the natural world, bringing hope, instead of focusing on its destruction.

Often my work consumes me and sometimes it seems selfish and small.  But I am aware of my responsibility as an artist to put good into the world.  My work isn’t overtly political, although, just by the nature of who I am it does have a feminist streak that runs through it.  What I’m sending out into the world may be tiny in comparison to everything around me.  But  I do hope and strive for it to bring light and to form a connection with the people who get to see and own it.

My work isn’t loud, but quiet, like a garden in moonlight.

Moonlight Garden is sold.

If you want to see some of  Alma Thomas’ paintings click  here.

The back of Moonlight Garden
The back of Moonlight Garden

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Full Moon Fiber Art