Silhouettes have an amazingly calming effect. I have two silhouettes pasted on my bedroom walls.
I came across this poor cat silhouette, all tattered and torn sorting through my mom’s old school stuff (she was a Grade 2/Sub b teacher) and became transfixed with it. It was so beautiful I couldn’t let it be thrown away. So…I got hold of some charcoal card, traced the shape and cut it out. It now sits on my skirting board and every time I see it, it’s simple beauty calms me.
The other cut-out I have are three swallows.
I have a fascination with maps and I hate the way that old maps, artworks, just get chucked away. My first idea to ‘rescue’ them was to create paper bags out of them. But this never materialized and I still have a stack of old maps under my bed. At the same time as this was going on I was busy doing a textile design with birds and loved the shapes I was coming across. I choose the swallow silhouette, worked on it a bit and cut it out of the maps. They now fly above my bed and fill a wall that would ordinarily be quite boring and plain. I love the correlation created by the swallow and the map. I have gotten a lot of compliments about them and really all they were was an experiment to fill a space when I had no money and little time. I have grown to love them and think I will keep them when I move one day.
