From drawing to watercolor and oil painting, then the painting on fabric and, as a natural evolution, came silk. In this learning process, with stages increasingly complex, from an economic material to a noble tissue, I passed them almost without noticing it.
The painting techniques on silk are very versatile, there are many different forms, from the abstract design that does not need neither brush nor frame, to the naturalistic painting that pampers the detail.
There are a lot of artists and artisans that work with silk in many different ways, and, among all of them, a painter who has influenced my way of working is Ute Patel-Missfeldt: her images on silk are cheerful and show a great sense of humor, the drawings did attract my attention and, reading most of her books, I discovered the technique of painting on glass that she invented, and this made it possible for me to paint silk in a naturalist way.
At the other end of the wide range of techniques of coloring silk is the shibori: a Japanese dyeing technique that had been invented 1,200 years ago. The first designs I saw thrilled me and I immediately had to buy a book to show me how to procure them. Part of the magic of this way of painting is that I'm never quite sure of what I'll find when I deploy the fabric, making it more exciting, although little by little I get the results that I am looking for.
