A Holy Year Begun

How does a work of art begin for me? Sometimes I don't know, but right now I am working on a project that started with a blank spot on the front wall of the church where I worship. What, I asked myself, would I make to hang there? My imagining wandered towards a series of banners celebrating the Christian year. The potential size and shape of the works would be determined by the size of the empty wall space.

I started making notes on the traditional colours for each church season, and one or two images came to mind: monarch butterflies for Easter . . . a sun rising behind winter branches for Epiphany. Why not limit myself to what I can see around me in this rural part of Eastern Ontario? For Holy Week, with the colours of black and red . . . we have been clearing hawthorn trees, and I hung a large branch in my small winter studio. It was both a model and an effective Lenten meditation, as I dodged the long, sharp thorns while I worked.

I have batiked possible versions of "Epiphany" and "Holy Week." I can't really tell whether I am satisfied with the pieces until the weather is warm enough to clean out the wax with solvent and hang them outdoors to dry. I plan to continue working on the series through the year, as I live each season of the Christian story.

Sarah Hale first learned about batik as an art form while teaching in Japan in 1968. Some years later, she took a workshop in basic batik technique, and began exploring the medium as a way of saying something new about an often-painted landscape. Her experiments pleased her, and in a few years she was making a living as a batik artist.

Sarah lives in a small village surrounded by lakes and bush land, and she never runs out of subject matter that both challenges and satisfies her. More of her work can be seen at her studio in Arden, or at www.ardenbatik.com.

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