About Salley Knight
Welcome to my online store! My name is Salley Knight. I'm a fine artist who creates luminous color on silk. I'm inspired by my surroundings on Squam Lake, NH, USA, and by a childhood spent riding horses in Virginia.
In contrast to artists who start out with relatively unattractive raw canvas as their surface, I take the perhaps more challenging route of working with intrinsically beautiful material, silk. I hand-dye the silk using traditional Japanese techniques. Whether I'm remembering my early days on horseback or witnessing the ever changing nature on Squam Lake where I've spent the last 35 years. I share with you the immersive experience of color as light or the direct image of a horse or landscape, floating like a dream on fabric.
I work with silk because I love color in all its complexity: from bright to subdued, from vibrant to subtle. Solid silk carries the color; translucent silk layered on top can shift these colors from one shade to another, or from one tone to another. I can be direct and simple, or have multiple orchestrations in one piece of art.
For anyone curious, I'll share with you the steps of the traditional Japanese technique for dyeing:
The centuries old technique is time consuming and a bit laborious, but creates stunning color that is part of the cloth itself.
- I soak the soybeans for 8 hours,
- blend them to create soy milk
- apply that to my silk (on stretchers) using the Japanese deer hair brush Jikome
- let it dry
- apply another layer of soy milk
- let that dry
I now know that when I apply the dye to the silk, the soy will carry the dye into the protein of the silk itself.
The color is not on the silk, it's IN the silk.
All for the sake of color: exquisite and compelling color.
Take a look at my art website for more images and background on my art.
www.salleyknightstudio.com