Pattern and Texture

Pattern and texture -- two lovely words!  I'm always looking for them -- sometimes they are elusive and other times they are right in front of me.  In my own work the use of beads lends itself to both pattern and texture, for me those two words are what its all about.

And so when I'm out and about my eyes and mind are constantly trying to see the designs that appear in the natural world.  We can make our own, but what a treasure it is when I find them developed by nature in all of its forms.

As we flew home from Nevada, one of the legs of the trip took us to Los Angeles.  When I first saw the plane we were to fly in and realized that it had propellers (yikes!) it bothered me. Apparently it was a turbo prop rather than the more commonly used jets.  But I was thrilled as it rose into the air because the plane stayed at a low enough elevation that we could see the ground throughout the whole trip.  And what a show it was!!  We flew alongside the Sierra's - seeing Lake Tahoe from the air, seeing what looked like hidden lakes placed hither and yon among those massive peaks.  We saw patterns galore, great rocky crags pushing up into the sky; large expanses of snow still on those peaks into June; shades of brown and green and of course the blue sky through which we flew.  If only my camera could have captured it through those small, blurry airplane windows.  But alas it lives only in my mind's eye. 

And so, once again I am home - amongst beads and thread and needle - ready to capture my own pattern and texture.  I will never, ever be able to compete with Mother Nature (nor would I want to) but in my own small way I'll give it a good try.

"All art is but imitation of nature". - Lucius Anneaus Seneca