Challenge - Irises by Vincent Van Gogh

This month the folks over at the Art Bead Scene came up with a real honey of a challenge. The inspiration was Vincent Van Gogh's painting Irises. I was so thrilled by this challenge that I took nearly all freaking month to think about it. I have been building this necklace in my mind for weeks now and only began putting the pieces that I made together yesterday.

I decided to really push myself to think way outside the box on this piece. My goal was to take only the most essential elements of the painting and still be able to convey the overall feeling in a simple and abstracted version in the form of a necklace.

I broke the painting down into two elements - Color and Texture. Color is the most obvious and would be the main way of making the connection between the original painting and my wearable version. I started with two triangles of porcelain which I glazed in layers of deep purple and clear. The clear glaze created some wonderful visual texture by pooling and creating cells of mottled color. When looking at Van Gogh's painting I was drawn to the single white iris and the few other touches of white that are place here and there - I was thrilled when I found those same points of light had occurred in my glazed pieces.

The focal 'bead', if you will, is a piece of copper which I etched with a beautiful iris design (thanks to Dani for digging through her immense rubber stamp collection and finding this perfect stamp!). I really love how this piece looks! It provides the most literal reference to the original painting while also providing the warm color of the copper and the texture of the etching which echos Van Gogh's bold brush strokes that clearly delineate random leaves and petals.

Two beautiful lampwork beads by Jennifer Jennings of Blue Seraphim give a much need spark of amber/yellow. For some reason I am particularly fond of the stack of copper jump rings I added above the beads. Probably because they hide a rather sloppy wire wrapping job and were a quick and effective fix. ;)

Another favorite little touch is this bead ball toggle thingy. The idea for this type of closure came to me at 4 this morning. I awoke with the idea in my head and knew I had to finish the necklace this way. It works perfectly and the large green bead helps to balance the colors and design. It is attached to a copper link chain which I patinated a gorgeous blue/green, giving the necklace yet another layer of color and texture.

I love the back almost as much as the front! :)