Django in the dyes

I had intended to post about the fabrics I dyed last weekend, for a series of projects, the first of which is now on the way. The fabrics are cotton scrim (in twists on the top), cotton wadding (the tope folded fabric) and various fabrics. Have got hooked on the combination of wadding and scrim so am trying something somewhat bigger than a postcard. If it continues to work as well as it is doing so far I may well take my courage in my hands and try entering it for something which is why I am keeping it under wraps for the moment.

All dyed with Procion MX (except the cat who I banished - I've been very careful ever since the day I found him strutting proudly round the neighbourhood with bright blue paws).

The purples are dyed with Fuchsia (8B) and carmine (5B) and a series of blues including 4RD which is a sort of deep midnight/ reddish navy. I find I get good purples using these two reds whatever blues I use. Trying to dye purple with the yellower (postbox) reds produces a duller, brownish purple.

Django loves having his photograph taken and he was not going to budge easily off all that lovely soft fabric: he looked so contented I didn't have the heart to chuck him off (luckily I have a good supply of lint rollers).

As a result of working on this new piece (which could end up being a series of pieces) I am having to take a brief rest from postcards but they have already served their purpose of getting me working again.

A footnote on lethargy - it appears that I have an enlarged thyroid gland and may be hypothyroid (a lot of symproms fit, especially the one about feeling exhausted much of the time). Am currently awaiting the results of blood tests. Hopefully it is treatable - according to a friend with the same problem - and I may lose some weight and have thicker hair - wouldn't it be wonderful to look and feel twenty years younger again? Though maybe that's a bit over-optimistic, I can dream...

Feline fun!

Ok Week 3 (actually it took a week and a half - busy finishing off group quilt for the QGBI Button Up Challenge and it's amazing how long those final stages take) of the "Wake up Sandra by making postcards challenge" This week I decided to have fun, using a range of favourite print fabrics to create some more lighthearted stuff on one of my favourite topics.

This time the challenge elements were to a)draw the cat outlines myself; and b)use a selection of fabrics I've found difficult to use so far:

In the case of this first one the checkerboard fabric (overdyed a few years back) with the wavy stripes and batik plus gold highlights. The cat needed the narrow red zigzag outline to make it work.

This one's called Hiding in the Garden, something my cats do a lot of, especially when I haven't weeded and the jungle takes over; the background's a really mad Laurel Burch fabric that I love but have found difficult to use so far and the blue seemed to have just the right amount of patterning to provide the contrast.

The thrid one is another two-fabric one, called I'm not talking to you - I'm sure most cat-owners will recognise this behaviour:

The mad squares is another irresistible bright I found languishing in the "one day I will find a use for this" corner of my stash and it sort of made friends with the blue stripe.

The next one, called Chat en forme d'une poire (Cat in the form of a pear) is based on my white cat Bixy who has been on a diet for the last year but not sd's you'd notice (I'm going to have to take drastic measures soon). He likes to spend time sitting looking our of the window and is always there to welcome me when I get home. I've used one of my favourite Carla Miller (Rowan) prints for the background.

This one's a portrait of my cat Django, a sort of birds-eye view of him lying in front of the fire with his paws in the air, in the way he's spent most of the last winter. He really does have a lightning-streak belly and a lop-sided face. A couple of years ago he had a serious road-accident - a complex pelvic fracture, plus associated nerve-damage and I was really scared he would lose the hind leg and the paw with the black spot - thankfully he recovered and is now more of a home-cat than a roaming moggie.

My third cat, Pepper, likes to climb trees: I love the way cats go up trees really fast and then panic sets in when they discover it's not so easy coming down - most tackle the problem by doing a sort of controlled fall. Anyway this is a cat up a tree - not necessarily Pepper who's tabby rather than blue:

The final card uses a selection of fabrics - an African dyed damask, an indonesian batik, a commercial batik and a black fabric with holographic swirls I couldn't resist at a show (you know how it is). I hadn't had any squabbling cats so far so included the arched back hissing pose in this one, plus the tail end of cat disappearing off the scene familiar to cat-owners everywhere.

Now feel inspired to take it a stage further and create a hanging with wild prints in bright colours and black and white: I now have a list of projects to undertake as a result of doing these postcards: well worth while.

postcards week two

After long deliberation, and with a certain amount of trepidation, I have decided to include here the "what was she thinking?" ones, because I think you can learn as much if not more from failures than successes and I would certainly find it reassuring to dicover that someone else had failures too.

The week two challenge was to use scrim: I have a stash of hand-dyed scrim crying out to be used: I love its texture and its ability to soak up dye; I've also used some of what we in the UK call muslin and those of you in the US and Canada call cheesecloth.

WARNING: some of these are downright ugly/clumsy/amateurish but publishing them is important to me in coming to terms with my hangups about failure.

Sunday and Thursday I played with chenille, a technique I hadn't got around to earlier, the snake being Sunday, the abstract Thursday: my chenille technique improved between the two but everything I'd learnt in Liz Berg's class went out the window (lesson - even speedy projects need a bit of forward planning) in the abstract one:


Can't make up my mind about the Monday and Tuesday ones - broadly I think I haven't got there yet but there are things worth exploring, especially the way it's possible to layer scrim and stitch to get a painterly effect.

Wednesday's effort is cringemakingly embarrassing: a real "what was she thinking of?" moment.

I felt distinctly lacking in ideas that day and could only come up with the idea of contrasting scrim with satin, chucking bits on without care or planning: I didn't even realise how unbalanced the shapes were till I took the photograph. Apologies. I think I've learnt my lesson though.

Friday's piece was speedy, enthusiastic and exciting to do, and came together like a dream: I'm not sure where the dolmen shape comes from though I'm familiar with it coming originally from Oxfordshire/Berkshire which has its share of them. Saturday's piece, which I like a lot less than Friday's is a less successful attempt (it went dead on me) at portraying standing stones from the end of the lane where we once lived - the local legend was that a man his horse and his dog had been turned to stone by a local witch.




Of them, I think there's only one that I'm happy about at this stage (and I shall probably develop strong reservations about that as my standards improve. However even one makes the week worth while, and I learnt far more from week two than from week one when I played safe!

The Elusiveness of Memory

This is about a memory I thought I had. My mother was a GI bride; she met my father whilst doing war work in Birmingham; he was stationed in Sutton Coldfield, a suburb of Birmingham. Early in 1946 they were married. I was born in April 1947. Somehow I had assumed that my father had stayed on in Birmingham and did not return to his home in New Bedford until a year or two after I was born. Looking back this is I think an assumption I made rather than anything I was told. I knew my mother missed the boat (literally) because my grandmother was ill and she did not want to leave; as time went on she then seemed to get cold feet about going to live in the USA; in the end my parents were divorced.

Recently I made a discovery that - whilst it was unsettling at the time - presented me with a slightly different version of events which made better sense than what I'd believed before. Migration records were published on the family history sites and I discovered the date of the boat my mother was to have taken and the alternatives - all three in the Autumn of 1946; soon after my mother would have discovered I was on the way, I suppose, almost as if I was a parting gift to her from my father, though of course he would have assumed she would be following him in a couple of months' time.

My parents had been very young by todays standards, (22 and 23), both from close communities and away from home for the first time, during wartime and the immediate postwar period when everything was disrupted. Though I spent some years of my life feeling unhappy that I didn't have a dad of my own, only a stepdad, and had a tendency to hero-worship the dad it now turns out I'd never met, I can see at this distance that it was a difficult and unhappy time for both my parents and can understand much better why they made the decisions they did.

So how does this fit in with my earliest memory? Well, what I remember is my mother taking me with her to a large railway station to meet a man whom she hugged and kissed; in my memory I had assumed this was my father, but now realise it can't have been (on reflection I think it might have been one of her cousins who came to visit her and my grandmother at that time - he and my mother had grown up together and were like brother and sister - I have a couple or recollections of his visit).

The piece here, however, portrays the memory that didn't exist. Two faces, poised as if to kiss; two faces turning away; onlookers in the background; all done in layers or various organzas to suggest the ways memories sometimes seem drifting and insubstantial.

a change from what I haven't been doing

For some time now I seem to have been beset by inertia - part physical (my body really doesn't like the dark months of the year) and part mental (the vicious circle of not meeting challenges I've signed up for, feelings of failure and of the fear of failure if I try something new and so on. I am about to retire from paid employment and I have plans for all sorts of things I want to do, but I reckoned that if I wasn't careful I'd spend my life sinking deeper and deeper into the sofa if I didn't take myself in hand.

SO

I came up with an idea that seems to solve that particular problem. I have given myself a further challenge: to make a fabric postcard every day. This is the first thing I do each day after breakfast or after returning home from work. There's very little investment in terms of time and materials. I'm finding that for once I don't mind if something doesn't go as well as I'd expected: I can always do another one tomorrow! Ideas are churning and I'm working on other things too, including catching up on challenges, notably the Take It Further challenge. I'm also exploring new ideas and ways of doing things. Most important for me is that life is suddenly becoming more enjoyable.

I will admit I played safe with the first batch, which I started a week ago (week 2 is riskier because I have challenged myself more) - all use fused applique and free-motion stitching which are techniques I am familiar with, and are based on plant forms (mainly dead plant I still have to weed out of my garden - I hadn't thought of this as being symbolic till now but maybe it could be). Anyway - here are the first five, Thursday to Saturday in order:

what's all this white stuff?

Easter Sunday and I woke to find snow on the ground. By the time I got dressed, grabbed the camera and went out it had half melted, but even so managed to get these shots of snow on the blossoms of my neighbours' flowering currant:

More from Liz Berg's class

Am catching up fast with this class, discovering design concepts I didn't know existed, and producing lots of small pieces (mainly paper but the most recent ones have een fabric). I'm also gaining confidence and learning to work more playfully. Here are a few more pieces:

I like this one a lot - not my usual colours but the brief was pale with low-key contrast and I surprised myself. (The papers I used are oil-marbled, done ages ago)

This is a more familiar colour-combination for me (paper painted with brusho on plain sugar=paper), as is the next piece:

The next set of pieces are about contrasts. Firstly a contrast in scale, which is not something I've considered a lot in the past

More marbled paper - hmm, maybe I need to marble some more fabrics to play with too. On to colour contrast (the greens are from magazine pages):

And then to texture: luckily I had some textured paper left over from my City & Guilds days; now I need to create some more (I intend to go over the exercises a number of times as some ideas still do not come naturally to me): marbled paper, gel medium and silver paint, plus angelina for the moon:

And the last in this group is a contrast of shapes (I chose straight and wiggly - a bit obvious but it sort of works, even if it does look a bit like snakes crawling over logs:

And finally a stitched piece - the brief was to produce a small stitched piece using contrast: in this case I used a colour contrast:

I have some reservations about this one - I need to live with it for a little while before I quilt and finish it, and I may need to modify it. I'm hoping by the end of this class I will be able to see more easily how I can change things to improve the design of a piece. Liz is expert at this, but I'd also welcome comments from blog readers.

Liz Berg: Elements & Principles of Design

Sorry I haven't blogged for such a long time - January brought successive illnesses - none major but unpleasant and one after the other which left me feeling flattened. I'd also signed up for various challenges and two classes which I'm now having to catch up on. Most of my spare time in the last few weeks has been spent on Liz Berg's class, Elements and Principles of Design.

This class has been very demanding and also very worthwhile. Though I found the first two lessons relatively straightforward, having done some design work as part of a City & Guilds class some time ago, lessons 3 and 4 (there are 6 in all) stretched me to the limit.

The earlier design work is done postcard-sized on paper, a useful way of working which produces fairly quick results without risking loads in materials. I chose for the most part to work in cut paper (I've loved cutting paper freehand ever since I did a C&G pproject on Matisse). Here are a couple of the more successful pieces, from a section on size (including relative size of different features of the design). The first is simple two-colour design:


At first I really disliked this design but it has gradually grown on me (it's also one of the ones Liz liked, which helped). The second is a similar exercise but using smaller high-contrast shapes against a dark background. I like this one because I think the contrast works well. The dark paper is painted with brusho; the light paper is the result of playing around in PaintShop with a photograph I took of mosses.


The third is from an exercise I found really difficult at first but eventually managed to get a grip of: the intention was to produce a design which moved the eye round the composition. Used the same paper as the second plus some cheap dayglo stuff from the kids section of my local supermarket.

Once the class is over I shall rework these and some of the other designs as fabric postcards - plus other ideas are already churning around in my head - enough to keep me going for some time! I've also gained a great deal of confidence (much-needed I assure you) doing this course.

You can find more details of Liz's class (also called Better Art by Design) on her website at www.lizbergartquilts.com/classes-schedule.asp

I'd really recommend this - it's really good value for money: though it may look expensive to start off with it's packed with so much that is valuable it's worth every penny.

love not war

Thought I'd share one of my favourite photographs from the icanhascheesburger website - http://icanhascheezburger.com/ I love the tenderness of this photograph, and the gentleness in the face and hand of the young soldier... I've been putting some of the funnier ones in my sidebar, but this one seemed to warrant more attention.

Currently not posting much or doing much of anything - have the awful norvirus that's sweeping the country so am feeling ill and weak (food doesn't stay put for long - though, rather unfairly, I don't seem to be any thinner!)

quilting with friends

These are my friends (from left to right) Liz, Gayle and Elaine, working on the beginnings of a group quilt for our quilt group Leeds Night Owls (so called because the emblem of Leeds includes two owls) as our contribution to a challenge from The Quilters Guild of the British Isles to produce a maximum one metre square hanging which can be buttoned onto other hangings on two sides. The top and side edges need to be square to fit the format, but the bottom edge can be irregular. Without giving too much away at this stage I can tell you that our will be - irregular that is. This is just the first stage - a strip-pieced background - and there will be a lot more people involved than the four of us!

It's been some time since I've worked on a group quilt, and it's been a really fascinating experience learning to shift my own ideas around to allow for the ideas of others and a real learning curve for the four of us working together, each with our own strengths and ways of working. Though I was taught by Elaine and have worked closely with her on one other project she is still able to come up with ways of solving problems I hadn't thought of (she really is an expert on how to do things perfectly!); and though I've known Gayle and Liz for years and thought I knew their work pretty well too I've discovered new things about their ways of working too. All of which has been an enormous learning curve - for all of us apparently. In my case it's certainly been a freeing up process - learning to share again after working so long on my own is really good for me and brings new ideas to my own work as well.

What's been amazing - and amusing - is the way usual roles have changed: Elaine the exact (so-called because normally everything she does is technically perfect) has been heard to say on several occasions "nobody'll notice that", "it's only the background so that bit can be covered up" and so on. Whereas Gayle who's normally very laid-back had to be almost physically restrained from pulling out and redoing work that looked fine to the rest of us.

All in all a nighly enjoyable experience and one we hope to repeat on a regular basis!

A Brief History of Western Art

Written in response to recent discussions on the Quilt Art list. Some of this I learned at the Warburg Institute (University of London); the rest I made up myself. To be taken with a big pinch of salt!

In the beginning there were things that needed to be made and makers who made them. Most things that were made had uses: tools, containers, clothes, bedcoverings and so on. Some had extra powers: images of animals that helped you catch food more easily, patterns that descibed journeys or gave you magical protection or told people who you were. People had begun to make art but they did not know it then for the word had not been invented. In any case, everyone did it so it was no big deal and there was no need to make up a special word for it.

Communities over time grew and became more complicated and instead of all doing the same things, people began to specialise in different things. Some tilled, some spun, some fished, some fought off raids from other groups or in turn raided other groups; some sat and watched. They made up a special word for this and called it civilisation.

In this civilisation there were some people who managed to live well without actually doing very much at all, but were good at making people believe that they were right to live like this because they alone understood what everyone else should be doing. They did not need to be makers anymore because other people made things for them. But because they themselves were special the things that were made had to be special too, and they invented a special word - art - to describe them, and they called the people who made them artists.

Soon great competition developed between these civilised groups to be biggest and best, and there was competition about art and artists too - you know the sort of thing: "My artist's got a bigger paintbrush than your artist", "my artist knows how to mix up two thousand shades of green", "my artist painted a whole ceiling with cherubs that look like they're actually peeing on you" and so on. And the people who didn't make art themselves but Knew What They Liked made up titles for themselves, and called themselves Patrons Of The Arts and Arbiters Of Good Taste. And the Arists, who by this time had acquired a capital letter, learnt that if they made their Patrons feel bigger and more important they got extra helpings at dinner, and flattery was born. And making things that flattered became far more important than making things that had uses.

In the meantime, some of the makers had also learnt that you could make things that didn't have uses, and they became artists. Though they didn't have capital letters they tried to become more like the Artists that did, in the hope that when they grew up they would get capital letters too.

When they discovered that there weren't enough capital letters to go round, some artists decided they would do something different and made up the word original to describe what they did. They were told that they were not Real Artists, only starving artists and as a punishment they were forced to live in draughty garrets with pot-bellied stoves that did not work very well so that they died of consumption and afterwards became Great Artists.

And the civilisations grew and grew and there were uppings and downings and massive topsy-turveyings all over the place. Suddenly capital letters were being lost and passed on and confiscated and begged and borrowed and stolen and nobody knew whose they were any longer and all sorts of confusions resulted. And out of the confusions came new and strange creatures - Gallery Owners, Critics, Collectors, Professors of Art; some of them were arists themselves but many were not but they were Rich and Respected and Had Taste and Knew What They Liked so they were able to explain to the artists what they should be doing. They saw all the artists and divided them into groups - Good Artists, bad artists, amateur artists, Real Artists, New Wave Artists, folk artists, commercial artists, craftspeople, would-be-artists and so on.

And in the end no-one knew who they were any more and many became uncertain whether they were allowed to call themselves artists at all.

And then someone asked the questions What is Art? and What is an Artist? and no-one knew the answer. So the only thing to do was laugh.

Make My Day Award

I was delighted to be sent this award by Marie at http://zquilts.blogspot.com/
I started this blog about nine months ago in a fit of total self-indulgence and as a means of sharing what I was doing with some of the people I had met on online courses, and as a sort of disciplining tool: if I had a blog I would have to make stuff so I'd have something to write about! At that time I'd never dreamed people would actually come back to it and enjoy reading it; and actually getting comments was very exciting (still is!). But the best of all is the number of cyber-friends I've made as a result of the blog and some of the email lists I'm on: it's so good to be able to "talk" to people who know where you're coming from.

Anyway one of the things I can now do is pass on the award to others whose blogs I enjoy and visit regularly. Some I haven't included have already received their award from other people. I've managed to whittle it down with some difficulty to ten, the recommended number, though I don't require anyone to pass it on if they've already received an award or aren't for any reason able to do it.

I've chosen the following blogs though there are plenty more I could have included:

Andrea: http://cestandrea.blogspot.com/ who lives in Paris, produces wonderful work based on the idea of spirit-masks and includes her own drawings and photographs on her blog (I specially love her walks through Paris) - oh and she is a cat-lover too!
Maggie: http://www.stitchingwithschnauzerandsiamese.blogspot.com/ whose blog contains a wealth and variety of wonderful stitchery with entertaining episodes from everyday life.
Marion: http://artmixter.blogspot.com/ who I first met in the days when I used to trade at the Scottish quilt shows - again a blog that's a mixture of wit and wisdom, beautiful artwork and light-hearted and fun pieces (with cats, too, which is always a bonus!)
Dijanne: http://origidij.blogspot.com/ whose wonderful artwork I have admired and gasped over for a long long time.
Cynthia: http://cynthia-stcharles.blogspot.com/ who produces amazing mixed-media and textile work.
Linda: http://bilsblog.blogspot.com/ whose blog I find fascinating in the way it shows the inspirations for and the development of her textile art.
Kate: http://katesquilting.blogspot.com/ whose energy, enthusiasm and sense of fun are guaranteed to cheer me up on the darkest of days - and I really envy the mass of glorious work she does, though can't imagine how she finds the time with a lively family to keep tabs on - do you have a time-turner, Kate?
Shirley: http://shirleygoodwin.blogspot.com/ colour in blog-form, wonderful dyed fabrics (her latest monoprints are to die for - no pun intended), dyer and quilter extraordinaire!
Liz: http://lizplummer.com/blog/ again a really enjoyable mix of artwork and everyday life with lots of detail about the way her designs and her work develop, which is always fascinating to read;
Julie: http://mixedmedia-jem.blogspot.com/ great photographs, wonderful artwork and (my favourite) really inspirational watercolours.

Back home and voiceless

Arrived home Saturday after a really good Christmas with my brother who lives in a cottage in Wytham woods just outside Oxford. This is a shot of part of the house: about half of the ground floor to be exact - not a large building and we are constantly amazed by the fact that it was originally not one but two houses - some time ago we had a visit from an old lady who had brought up a family of six in what is now the kitchen, entrance hall and master bedroom!

The house was originally built in the nineteenth century as estate cottages for Wytham Abbey, about two miles distant. Now the estate is owned by Oxford University, which means that, much as my brother would like to buy this house, he is only allowed to rent it. You can read more about Wytham Wood at http://www.wildcru.org/links/wytham/wytham.htm and see some wonderful pictures at the website of local photographer Tobias at http://www.moochuk.com/

This is the gate leading from the front to the back garden. The architecture of the estate buildings is gothic revival, as is Wytham abbey itself. The walls are really substantial - the external house walls being two feet thick in places. Even so, it did suffer subsidence (all those trees!) several years ago and had to have extensive repairs.

As you can see the stone itself has wonderful colours and textures.

One of the great things about staying there (in addition of course to the warm welcome, good company, excellent food, and walks in the woods) is that my sister-in-law Gill looks after a colony of feral cats.
These qualify as feral cats only technically: they live out doors most of the time (a few of the bolder ones come in to curl up in the warm for a while sometimes and in inclement weather the doors of various outbuildings are left open for them) and from time to time hunt their own food - a cat has to keep in pratice! The colony remains, but the members of it change - the lives of feral cats are short, but there are several kittenings a year (local farm-cats oblige as absentee fathers). My sister-in-law feeds them, with some of the food subsidised by a local cat charity.

The cat on the right is the mother of many of the colony. The grey cat behind is called Bat because he had to grow into his large ears and Tiger is the youngest of the current colony, still a kitten. The other tortoiseshell, on the left, has a habit of disappearing from time to time (probably to chat up the farm cats!). The older toms (two each of ginger and black) are rather nervous around humans. Momma is the only one who will let herself be stroked and then only occasionally - with the exception of Bat who will let my nephew cuddle him (Gareth has always had a way with animals and really works hard at gaining their tru

As you can see from the state of Ginger, they actually look nothing like feral cats - very fluffy and well-rounded and beautifully clean - a short life but a happy one, as far as we can see.

Oh yes, the voiceless bit: I had a cold, then a nasty chesty cough. Went to bed late after celebrating the New Year. Woke up this morning - no voice - which is weird and VERY frustrating!

Anyway, since I can't say Happy New Year to anyone by phone let me say Happy 2008 here to all my cyber-friends!

a lovely surprise in the post

I had a surprise package in the post yesterday, from Marie at http://zquilts.blogspot.com/, containing two gifts:

Firstly a beautiful needlefelted purse embellished with masses of tiny beads and hand-made braid. I've admired and coveted her bags and purses for some time now so I really was delighted to receive this, which I think is a particularly good one. I keep taking it out and stroking it. My mobile phone fits into it perfectly, though it took me a while to work out that that was what it is designed for (I can be really thick about such luxury items at times).

It has also marked a change in my thinking: at one time anything as beautiful as this would have been too good to use, and would have been placed carefully in a drawer with other treasures and saved. Now I think this is too good not to use: I want to have the joy of seeing it and using it every day - it's far too beautiful to languish in a drawer!

The second photograph shows the back which is no less beautifully embellished than the front.

And this came with it - a beautifully dyed piece - I think with walnut shells (?): I remember admiring the walnut dyeing on Marie's blog some time ago. You can't see too clearly in the photograph but it has lovely intricate patterning.

Some people don't believe it's possible to have "cyber-friends": I really appreciate all my friends, cyber and otherwise!

And in case I don't see you before then have a wonderful Christmas everybody!

cats' christmas update

It gets better.

I've now visited the cattery to check it out.

The cats get the radio left on (with music) to make them feel at home. Not only do they get home-cooked turkey, chicken or meat on Christmas day, but they get individual Christmas stockings complete with toys and treats. They also get played with and cuddled.

The cat-guests who were there when I visited were lively and friendly (well there was one sitting sulking but there's always one isn't there?), running to the front of the pens with tails up and expecting to be stroked, which was the best of all.

I'm just hoping they'll still want to come home when I collect them after Christmas!

A footnote on Edwardian artist Louis Wain. Though he was best known for his cartoonish pictures of cats, he also produced a number of more abstract works such as the ones above. These are often cited as a "progression" illustrating his "descent into madness" (he suffered from late-onset schizophrenia): in fact though this looks like a sequence, the works were not necessarily produced in sequence, since many of the "abstract" ones were produced earlier than some of the "naturalistic" ones (the so-called sequence was put together by an academic anxious to prove a point) - perhaps Wain was simply, like many artists, exploring ideas!