A dreaming house

A dreaming house - this is a larger work of very detailed embroidery.... Intricate is a word I use quite often to describe my imagined stitched paintings/drawings - but this one really is quite, quite intricate and took many hours. I worked on one small area at a time, building little rooms within rooms, or details connecting with the whole, so that there is some kind of flow, but also a sense of space, differing perspectives and layers of meaning...  I did not want to stitch a house with easily defined rooms, but my aim was to build a dream-like world. There are pictures within the larger picture, such as the framed portraits on the 'wall'. (Tomorrow, when I put this work into my shop, I know I am going to find it tough to chose just five photos to describe this, so I may add more photos to my flickr stream.)

Meanwhile, here is the 'top layer of the cake' or attic scene:



The chairs are described in stitch just as I often paint them - with their own quiet personalities.... - always aiming toward some kind of ambiguity, I hope there are stories for you to enjoy and think about here, in this house of dreams....

Edit: I've just come back to this to add a few more thoughts.... I wanted to say it was important to me to use black and white for this work. One of my earliest memories is the black and white tiles on the floor in my great-grandfather's kitchen - a room that had not altered since the 1930's, complete with tiny stove and no fridge. It seemed important to have blocks of solid black and solid white in areas, to balance the complexity.... This piece has really taught me to stop and think, and to be quietly bold....