“Wherever you go, there you are…”

Laundry Day, Marseilles France - archival digital artwork

No matter where you go, no matter how romantic or exotic the location that surrounds you, there is always laundry to do.

I’ve recently returned from a wonderful trip through the Mediterranean, and was drawn to taking photos of laundry hung from windows and balconies in the places we stopped. Like paintings hung in an outdoor art exhibition, their colorful forms caught my eye as the breeze made the clothes dance. When hung, the shirts and skirts, shorts and pants, formed horizontal stripes floating high above me between the windows and buildings.

This piece began as an iPhoto taken in Marseille, France. I cropped the image to emphasize the laundry and then translated it into a digital work on my iPad Pro. I “painted” with the colors of the photograph, then added the bright red, green and orange sections for contrast. I like the abstraction and the play of the bright colors against the subdued. And I love the subject matter.

It was good to have some time away. I spent a lot of time really looking at things - consciously noticing what I noticed - and then considering how and why what I notice informs my work. As evidenced by the myriad of photos of laundry drying that I took, it’s clear that it’s the small, everyday things that draw my attention. I took very few photos of the monuments, statues, and historic edifices that typically demand documentation by tourists. So be it.

(Credit for quotation: Jon Kabat-Zinn)