March 2022 - Barbara Sefran Art

Tangled Garden : Robin

*From The Tangled Garden Serie*s : *Robin*

I made The Tangled Garden Series as a reminder of the black and white illustrations in the children’s and botanical books of my childhood, and in some Japanese prints.

Apart from the fact that I love plants and many animals, what especially interests me is their patterns, which are brought out better in black and white, patterns such as the Branching Pattern of leaf veins and branching of tree-branches

These are not straight B/W photos, but were originally coloured ones, which I have worked on “by hand” so to speak, not just using pre-made filters, to produce the effect which I wanted. Time-consuming!

You can see more about this by clicking Art Methods here or in the top heading and scroll down to the robin , near the end.

Mandala of Chaos Crossing Order

Mandala of Chaos crossing Order

The “Mandala” of Chaos and Order was made long before we felt the chaotic global effects of whatever caused the Covid 19 pandemic to start.

The apparent wave of “chaos”crossing my symbol for order here (from a clay clock-face which I made in my pottery days) arose out of yet another combination of chance, real liquids and solids and finally, digital art.

The order of the universe itself, plus the order which we believe we see in it, plus chaos, chance, complexity, uncertainty, the interconnection of all things . . what we do with all that : c’est la vie!

Tangled Garden: Ferns

Ferns are one of the oldest plants. They first appear in the fossil record about 360 million years ago, but many of our present families and species only appeared about 145 million years ago.

Ferns figure in some folk tales and children’s stories, and are the emblem of New Zealand and probably of many towns.

They are one of my favorite plants. I’m not sure exactly why, apart from the fact it’s interesting to think of how long they have been around and that I tend to like “green” plants more than most garden flowers. Perhaps it’s because they have been part of my life for so long. As a child, I played with friends in an overgrown vacant lot opposite our house, which we called The Jungle. There were lots of huge bracken ferns, now considered a weed, but not to us then. We used to dare each other to swing out on a rope hanging from a tree, over some very prickly bushes, and jump off at the furthest point of the swing to land safely in a mat of bracken, before the rope swung back again! Ferns were also one of my earliest introductions to making art, when my aunts showed me how to make rubbings over fern leaves with my crayons.