Ochre and Complex Cloth

Complex Cloth: Study in Ochre

I started reading a new (to me) book called Color: A Natural History of the Pallette by Victoria Finlay.  It's filled with wonderful stories and the history of colors used by artists through the ages, and how those innovations in color changed art.

Color #1 is Ochre.  It's never been my favorite color-- also known in my world as "baby-shit-brown."  But sometimes that's just the neutral color you need in a piece to bring it all together.

Take the complex cloth at the top of this post.  I dyed that many years ago, and NEVER liked that awful color.   To my eye, it looked like dirty cleaning rags.   What would I ever use that horrible color in?  Give me a bright and bold batik any day over that boring and blah failure of a fabric.

But the thing about complex cloth is that it has many layers ...  and that ocher background worked remarkably well for the "ornaments" I stamped over the top.   I used a metal trivet as a stamp.   The different colors make them move forward and recede as if it were 3-dimensional.

I'm still not quite sure how to finish this piece off -- What's next?