Infinity Dots Colour scheme

A Trip to the Art Gallery – Of course you’d expect some quilt inspiration there!

My daughter has been itching to go to the SA State Art Gallery again for a while. And I’m always up for a trip to an art gallery. Especially now that I’m always on the alert for a quilt design inspiration or two. Yesterday was a public holiday, so we grabbed the opportunity for some rare “Mummy and Me” time. Let me show you what we found. 🙂

My daughter has her eye on an Art and Design badge she would like to earn for her Cub Scouts, and one exercise she has chosen to do towards her award is to go to an art gallery, choose one of her favourite pictures and make a sketch of it.

girl and Infinity Dots painting

Our State Art Gallery is not huge, so you can get around the entire collection in an hour or two unless you are feeling very contemplative. So we had a complete walk through the building first so that my daughter could choose a favourite picture. In the end she settled on one that actually took her fancy right from the beginning, called “Infinity Dots”. I think, when something resonates with you, it sticks in your head.

Infinity Dots by Yayoi Kusama at the South Australian State Art Gallery

Infinity Dots painting details

Contemplating Infinity Dots

I was forced to spend quite some time contemplating Infinity Dots. There wasn’t very far I could wander and still keep half a protective eye on my daughter. The little gallery where this piece was hanging was dedicated to the exploration of death and cultural perceptions of the afterlife. So, while some of the exhibits were fascinating, others were quite macabre and disturbing. I wasn’t in the mood to spend time on the latter, so I did spend a lot of time studying Infinity Dots. Where Infinity Dots fit into that gallery’s theme, I am not entirely sure. The connection wasn’t as obvious as most.

Anyway, like my daughter, I liked Infinity Dots. Like a good quilt it had something to offer from a distance, closer up and in detail. From a distance, the overall patterns in the dark and light groups of circles were obvious, and brought a 3D-like quality to the painting. However, this effect was quickly lost as you moved closer and the painting became more about the way the circles nested.

Infinity Dots mid-distance

And up very close, it was about the texture of the paint and the shading within each circle. Marvellous.

Infinity Dots, detail

Inspired by Infinity Dots

I like quilts with circles on. I have been collecting Pinterest pins of quilts featuring circles for as long as I have had an account on there, and my Circles on Quilts boards is one of my oldest. So it probably should be no surprise that while my daughter saw a warm bubble bath in this painting, I saw a quilt design. Something covered in lots of circles or oval shapes.

Infinity dots quilt design

I wouldn’t necessarily make an Infinity Dots-inspired quilt in black and white though. Any monochrome or two-colour colour scheme would be really effective. What I would love to do is explore this idea in an ombre fabric. Cut out a stack of circles and arrange them on a contrasting background, using the built in shading of the fabric to provide intriguing shifts in colour value. I reckon you could do this exercise an umpteen dozen times and end up with a unique quilt every time. Definitely something for the ideas folder…… of course, sewing down all those circles would also be another way to further explore the invisible machine appliqué technique I have been playing with lately.