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RE-CREATING her background
Jo Ann Welch is a Nantucket artist best known, up until now, for her Tuscan landscapes. Many island artists will tell you that to be known for anything on island can make the difference between struggle and success, but Welch, 37, is doing what any artist worth his or her salt does eventually - she's trying something new. With an associate's degree in Applied Arts and Interior Design from the Art Institute of Houston, Welch has begun drawing on her love for patterns and fabrics - literally. "Last fall, I started having some ideas about using patterns in my work, and the first thing I thought of was using a pattern from a Pucci fabric that had some undulating lines and a few different colors in the same family," said Welch, who works as the office manager for Chip Webster and Associates. "I kept looking at these fabrics for inspiration and woke up one morning and wondered what would happen if I painted on the fabric." She adhered the fabric to canvas, then primed it with clear, acrylic varnish before painting into the foreground a ripe, luscious pear, which she happened to bring home for lunch that week. "The pear had an unusual shape, a very feminine form; it just said to me that it needed to be painted," said Welch, who snapped a few photos of the fecund fruit before sinking her teeth into it.
Compared to what Welch has done in the past, this series is bolder and freer with its use of color - unadulterated in its happiness. The fabrics she used in her pieces were predominately old pieces she picked up at garage sales. In this series, Welch also used toile - a fabric she "fell in love with" in design school. "I fell in love with it because it has a story behind it. It's a historic fabric," said Welch of the 19th century French fabric that generally depicts pastoral scenes in repeating patterns. "I always thought it was an incredible thing for someone to take time in a fabric to tell a story." The freedom of Welch's inspiration is captured by the joyful freedom of her fabric paintings, which have now begun to incorporate the landscapes of Tuscany - where Welch studied landscape painting some years ago. But this time, there's a twist. The landscapes are set on paisley fabric, with the cells in the paisley becoming parts of the landscape and sky. "I'm outlining the paisleys with different shades of yellow ochre, which is the same color the grass turns in the winter in Tuscany; it kind of looks like when they cut the fields and you can see the lines the tractor left in the grass," said Welch, who added that paisley is something of a sentimental print. (She used to draw it in high school.) In large part, this fabric series is about getting back to early inspirations in drawing and art (including the fun), according to the artist. "I've always wanted to be able to paint whatever I want to paint, and it's kind of hard to think that people think, 'Oh, she's the girl who does those cypress trees,'" Welch said. "I really felt inspired by this, and if I didn't paint it, I wouldn't be true to myself. I feel like if I have an idea, I have to explore it. Hopefully people will see in my paintings that I'm following my heart and inspiration."
I EXHIBITION 12 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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