I belong to a guild here in New Mexico, The New Mexico Silk Painters' Guild. It is a great group of multiple level artists. It has been a real source of engagement and pleasure while I've lived here in New Mexico. For me, obviously, a local living treasure. I am now also vastly enjoying the SPIN presence on Facebook. SPIN stands for Silk Painters International. Their membership is worldwide. The last three conferences they've held (they hold conferences every two years) have been in Santa Fe. So fortunate for we local silk painters and other artists. The FB presence is a gold mine of inspiration and information. Since I'd been reviewing it so much recently I decided to get back into silk painting, which I'd shied away from because of my "fear of gutta". For me that fear was being limited to cartoonish type drawings and/ or doodles which I'd already done years ago. I am not a trained artist and am fully aware of the years of effort it takes to build up a "hand," an "eye," etc. Not that I didn't rush into things over and over thinking "oh, I can do that". But the reality is that, like music, or painting, this technique builds up in complexity, subtlety, etc. over time and lots of practice. So, willing to give it a shot, I tried drawing some tulips--very stylized of course. I love art nouveau so that was ok. But then the problem arose of how to compose something with coherence, meaning? I thought of doing a "one-corner Ma" type composition (a famous Soong dynasty Chinese painter known for his compositions based on large objects in one corner) but quickly realized how super ambitious that was. If I went down that road I'd be working on it for probably years. Then I saw a Japanese kosode (kimono) with stylized silk painting and realized I'd found my template. It took a full week, which surprised me. 36" x 36" is a lot of silk to cover I guess if you're actually painting/drawing. Here is the result.