Oh I have been busy recently. From the initial funding and group set East Durham Creates of Silk Painting for people and carers of dementia, additional funding has been found to continue the group which we are now calling Making Art Time. I say funding was ‘found’ but it is never as simple as that is it, Nicola from The Barn at Easington has been the most wonderful advocate for our group and she sourced the funding for us. Her hands on approach to art is amazing and addictive and we have been immersing ourselves in creating from nature. With walking in the Dene (woods) collecting leaves, berries and anything that takes our eye, reading poetry whilst sitting on fallen trees, we have embraced natures peace in our dementia journey.
For me it’s quite spiritual being in a wood in autumn when the leaves are a mass of reds, golden with a variety of browns and greens. There is a wonderful silence that you can only experience in a wood or forest, with occasional natural sounds of cracking, shuffling and a bird or two singing.
One day we created shapes and pattens on the floor of the wood amongst the trees using moss, logs and leaves; skewered coloured fallen leaves on broken twigs and hung them amongst the brown branches.
It felt like being a child again.
In January our group is creating a wall banner of mixed media, representative of the group.
The most important thing is that I love going to this group. It is not noisy in the sense that it could be overwhelming. We talk, laugh, exchange thoughts, ideas and most of all we understand each other. It is comfortable to be amongst company who may need to ask what day it is, or what we did last week, or who is picking us up.
An arrangement of wax dipped autumn leaves and berries collected from woods, with a pigeon feather. Mounted on a round slice of branch originally used as a prayer message (written on underside) from local church.
This is a piece of textile are that I have done at home. It is a leaf hand sewn onto hand dyed cotton.
Needle weaving to complete damaged edges on the leaf. Seed stitch around edge, with a two spot ladybird. It represents my dementia with the holes in the leaf repaired. The seeds around are memories which are scattering but not yet gone.
Handbagwarrior; verbal ramblings 
Sounds like a great project and I love your leaf art work.
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I like the leaf and ladybug one the most.
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I love the textile piece! The images in the frames look really interesting too – what’s the medium underneath the nature objects? The leaves dipped in wax are exquisite – I also enjoy working with wax.
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Thanks Paula 🙂
We poured molten beeswax into the frames and added some pigment (powdered paint I think). Added our nature objects and then lightly brushed some wax over. I loved doing it! Such a wonderful mix of mediums.
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