Cranes

New Year

The subject of cranes, pines, and the rising sun, are a set piece for New Year pictures in Japan. The red feathers on the cranes’ heads echo the red of the rising sun. This scroll was an experiment in layering silk on paper for the artwork. Scroll paintings on silk use a particular kind of semi-transparent fabric called eginu. When you take the backings off, the painted sections appear to float on the transparent silk. Since this scroll was falling apart, I cut the bottom section of cranes and pines, and layered them over an abstract image of a crane by Michael Hofmann. The red head of Michael’s crane takes the place of the sun in this picture.

I re-used the cloud-pattern silk for the inner frame.The outer sections are pale jade green light crepe, shot with a metallic medallion pattern.

The companion piece is a scroll where I layered the sun from the original silk painting over a piece of calligraphy (another “moto” by Sally MacLaren) in a more modern mounting.