20" x 29"

The story of "The Kiss"

I wonder how I could have spent fifty years of my life without knowing of the art of Gustav Klimt and his painting titled The Kiss. My partner Lou is responsible for our introduction.

When I first saw Lou's framed print of The Kiss I just stared at it in awe. Being a student of psychology and the work of Jung, I murmured, "Look at the symbolism!" The profusion of circles, swirls, rectangles, flowers, and entwined bodies, everything in a flat dimension yet the faces and hands painted with shading and depth, left me speechless. A few years later, I visited the original painting of The Kiss at a museum in Vienna and again I just stared at it in awe. Klimt's use of gold leaf for the clothing was spectacular, and his brush stokes were bold and free. The painting was encased under a protective acrylic cover, emphasizing its delicacy.

My impetus to stitch The Kiss came to me one morning as I stared at the blank wall opposite my bed. "I need a sensuous painting in this room" I thought. The next thought was "I don't want someone else's art on my wall" followed by "I'll create my own". There was a brief interlude when I searched my mind for an idea. "I'll stitch The Kiss", I decided.

I wanted to create this magnificent painting in my medium, needlepoint. Stitching with silk, velour, velvet, chenille, beads, I would weave their luxurious garments, adorn their hair with flowers, and plant the field of flowers in which the lovers were kneeling.

I began by tracing the print of The Kiss onto 18 mesh needlepoint canvas. My first plan, to stitch within an outline drawing and not to paint the canvas, could have been fraught with problems. Fortunately for me, I just happened to find a painted needlepoint canvas of The Kiss and I bought it. This canvas painting was somewhat altered from the original, it was missing the field of flowers, her foot, and the background space on the right side. Yet I knew that I could work with this canvas, enlarge it and include the missing details.

For two years I lived with Klimt in my imagination as we created "our" piece together. We consulted on technique, interpretation, and agreed on the fibers and stitches to be used. I always asked for his approval whenever I needed to make an artistic decision.

Amazingly, the final size of my completed piece measures the same as the one that I had started to created with my own tracing, being 20"x29". The piece does hang in our bedroom and it continues to bring me as much joy in living with it as it did in the planning and stitching.

I was fortunate to have a book about Klimt with great colour images. I colour photocopied a picture of The Kiss, and then enlarged that copy into several sections until each section was very close in size to that of my painted canvas.

From these "detail" copies, I could clearly see the subtle mix of colour. When stitching skin tones I mixed various colours together when I threaded the needle, creating an optic mix of colour.

Face, hand and garment details were "redrawn" because I wasn't pleased with the canvas depiction of the original. To redraw: I traced from the detail photocopy onto tissue paper. Then I basted the tracing onto my canvas. Next, I "drew" the new lines onto the canvas by basting directly on top of the traced lines with red thread. When that was complete, I removed the tissue paper and stitched within the red lines. Last, I removed the red threads when the stitched area was complete. I redrew many areas from their faces to the hem of the garments in this tedious but highly satisfying and successful method.

To duplicate the field of flowers, I used the detail copy of the field of flowers as my guide to pencil draw floral groups directly onto the newly attached canvas. Then I used acrylic paint to quickly paint these groups. Most of the detail was done in the stitching rather than in the drawing and painting. All raised textural stitching was stitched first and filled in later with basket weave, allowing the detail to come forward and the background to recede.

I attached the new canvas in two parts. One part covered the full horizontal bottom portion of the piece, beginning with the garments above her leg and continuing down to the bottom of the canvas picture. The second part was a vertical piece, attached vertically to the old canvas and then horizontally to the top of the new canvas on the bottom. I attached the pieces as one would make a seam on a garment, sewing with a running stitch and very heavy thread. Then I opened the seam, which was trimmed to avoid any extra bulk, and then needle pointed through both canvas layers.

"Where there's a Will, There's a Way"

>Click within the stitchings to see the detail images: