By Don Urquhart, Times-Chronicle
From a distance, the stunning artwork of R. Leslie Forbes appears as vibrant acrylic on canvas. But that couldn’t be farther from reality. She has no use for canvas, brushes or traditional paint in her artistic universe. Instead, her’s is a world that exists primarily in the realm of fabric and dye.
Procion, a brand of fibre reactive dyes and Dynacolor paints are the preferred stock of her trade. Add to that cotton, silk, wool, ribbon, organza (a thin, plain weave, sheer fabric traditionally made from silk) and even cheesecloth – anything that will hold dye – and you have her equivalent of a painter’s canvas and medium. Replace the brush with a pair of scissors and a needle and thread and the equivalency of her artistic tool kit is basically complete.
“I didn’t expect to be doing this,” the weaver and fourth-generation quilter confesses. Quilting still plays a crucial role, however, because “everything is three layers,” she says. And this is certainly part of the uniqueness of this style of art because it is effectively art in three dimensions.
“I had no intention of doing this at all and then my aunt who was supposed to make me a bed quilt wasn’t able to and sent the fabric back to me. I had all this fabric for a king-size bed, so I thought I’ve got to learn how to do this.
“So it started very simply and then all of a sudden I realized this is where I wanted to be and I sold all my weaving material and my loom.”
That was surely a wise decision because the passion she exudes for her art is unmistakable, something that has been validated time and again with countless awards. But the awards are not what brings the greatest joy to her – that is reserved for the creative process.
“It’s the process that I enjoy the most, of course. I work in two different ways. Sometimes it can be a photograph that stimulates the idea and then I will draw full-size patterns and from those patterns, I can then create the individual elements that are involved.”
This process can be lengthy, taking up to 250 hours to complete a piece. To put it into perspective, if she worked every single day for five or six hours that would take almost a month to complete.
Many of Forbes’ art pieces have been informed and inspired by her extensive world travel. Japanese woodblock prints, the fortresses of India’s Jaipur and birds in Port Douglas, Australia are just three examples hanging on the walls of the gallery. Closer to home, coastal rainforests, First Nations imagery, local quails and Spotted Lake have all fired her creative spirit.
“So that’s often the stimulus for what I do, other times I work with just an idea or a piece of fabric that inspires me and then I work improvisationally to create. It’s a process where anything can inspire me,” she enthuses.
“I create the image I want and in the fashion that suits that piece,” she says, pointing to her Spotted Lake piece. She wanted texture on the mountains so she used wool which comes in little strips called roving which she needle punched into her background fabric.
To provide the borders around the coloured spots of the lake, Forbes used silver organza which gives the spots a watery shimmer.
There are really no bounds to her use of materials and techniques. She references one of her pieces in the show. An old wooden barn, appearing worn but sturdy, its weathered wood bearing the silvery grey patina of time.
In front is a rusty faded red truck from a bygone era and overhead perched on the barn’s roof is a pair of crows – she likes to add a little life into her artwork, she chuckles.
Unable to create the right effect for the barn wood using dyes, she painted the fabric. The truck on the other hand was created from a piece of white fabric that she stained with rust by leaving it on an old tractor at a friend’s place. Once it was ‘rusted’ she then over-painted it.
“I dye a lot of my own material because the range of commercial material doesn’t really suit what I do. And if I can’t find the colour I want then I’ll paint.”
Another visual example is a three-grain elevator town from the prairies on a waning winter day. “This was to be one of those days in winter when the snow is melting and you’ve got bits of it here and there. I wanted that sky that you only get on those kinds of days so it’s painted with Dye-Na-Flow paint to get that effect.” And indeed the sky possesses an airy depth that just seems to go on forever.
Forbes says her new style relies on triangles as a way of getting more colour into a piece like a painter would paint with a brushstroke.
And yet another example of a variation in technique. A sailboat in the perfect wind, the sea throwing up swells presents an image that gives you a perceptual feel of the thrill of being on that boat.
“Each piece has its own inspiration,” she says. “This one started with the inspiration from woodblock prints because I love the way the Japanese do their water, so that was the inspiration for it.
“And I thought if you’re sailing, everything starts going on the diagonal, the sails go on a diagonal, the boat is on a diagonal, so I’ll get the motion in the sky the same way,” she explains.
Like a number of pieces at the show, this one has been spoken for and is heading off to Annapolis Royal in Nova Scotia after the show.
Fascinated by a process that is obviously creatively similar to a traditional painter but yet so very different I ask Forbes whether the artistic thought process of getting images from ones’ mind to a final physical form is different between the two forms.
“I don’t think so because I think when I’m creating I’m also thinking about how the colour is going to move, how to get a background a mid-ground and the foreground in a piece.
“You have to think about how are these fabrics gonna work against each other and I think that’s the same thing when you paint, you paint the background, middle ground, foreground and then highlights.
And as one would expect, the style of her art is evolving. “This is the style I’m working in right now,” she says pointing to one piece that striking in its bold contrasting colours and geometric shapes, impressionist in its leaning. “It’s much more freeing because I’m using triangles as a simple way of getting more colour into a piece like a painter would paint with a brushstroke.”
For a fascinating look at this unique art, the fabric artwork of R. Leslie Forbes is currently showing at THE ART GALLERY Osoyoos on Main Street until April 30. The gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday from 12 p.m. to 4 p.m.
