Gilding the Lily is a common misquotation of a line from William Shakespeare's 1595 play King John - iv 2:
"To gild the refined gold, to paint the lily, to throw perfume on the violet, to smooth the ice, or add another hue unto the rainbow, or with taper-light to seek the beauteous eye of heaven to garnish, is wasteful and ridiculous excess."
The Gilded Lily (giglio dorato) is my response to time spent in Florence and Paris in 2008, and my love of the Renaissance and the decorative arts generally. It is an "over the top" approach using the lily and, in some cases, religious iconography, as motifs, along with black and white tiles, a link to my maternal grandmother Pollie's mosaic plates. It may well be seen as "wasteful and ridiculous excess" but this decorative approach to my work is, in a way, an attempt to clean up my "ridiculous excess" once and for all - utilising all the bits and pieces I have collected over the years. Like the old gilt frames I have accumulated. I can't walk past them in an op shop and I now have a studio full of them. My intention is to incorporate these frames as part of the wall works themselves. I see my work as "Wall Jewellery", adorning spaces and hanging like brooches and necklaces. I use embedded, embossed, embellished and cast cotton paper with found objects, ceramic tiles and decorative papers. My work is part assemblage and part collage. It is tactile and colourful with a play of light and shade due to the relief created through embedding things under the paper.
I am working towards an exhibition called
Gilding the Lily
(doratura del giglio)
possibly in 2012.
This is a sample of works in progress.
barb troughear crowden - works
in paper & paperclay raku
PO Box 440 Bega 2550 NSW
Australia
0415273894
barbaracrowden@gmail.com
pulpaddictionpaper.com.au
©
barb troughear crowden 2010