NTAQ: The Rothko Challenge

For our monthly challenge, Jaye chose a painting by Mark Rothko, the abstract expressionist known for large, transcendent color field paintings.  Our inspiration painting is Untiltled, 1964:
The painting is deceptively simple.  Three rather murky rectangles.  How do you abstract something that is already stripped to its essential elements?

An interesting challenge, and one that the members of NTAQ handled quite well, I think.  Our pieces were, as always, very different but very obviously inspired by the painting.

My piece was one of the more literal ones.  I used large rectangles of solid, hand dyed reds alternating with heavily pieces sections of red and gold:
Kerri's piece is an exploration of texture and color:
 I love Bethany's piece:
 Wendy used thread play to define her fields:
 Jaye was inspired by the exuberant palette:
I love Rhonda's interpretation.  It was bright, bold and very graphic:
 And all of them together:
It was a busy meeting.  Wendy and I had given everyone a strip-pieced assignment, due at the April meeting.  Several had finished their quilts.  Some hadn't.  Kay, Rhonda and Bethany brought their stripsets:
 Wendy showed a strip-pieced triangle quilt.  I love it!
 Jaye's quilt was pretty fabulous:
 As was Kerri's.  This quilt makes me happy:
For the second quarter of 2019, the group is going to work on using paper collages to design larger quilts.  We started by painting paper:
While the paper was drying, we made a few black and white collages:
The assignment for May is to make a quilt using a collage as the guide.  I can't wait to see what everyone comes up with!

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