🎨Moki Cherry

Experiential exploring & organic evolution

Feb 01, 2024

∙ Paid

Welcome to Running with Rainbows, my name is Maja Larson and I am from Oakbank Manitoba Canada! I am a self taught Multi media Artist who enjoys making & teaching art online and in person.

All throughout 2024 we are exploring Women Artists and creating fun creative pieces inspired by each Artist!

February feature Artist Moki Cherry kicks us off with her Aquarius energy!

Moki (Monika Karlsson) was born Born in 1943 on February 8th in Stockholm Sweden.

Her family moved around Sweden due to her Father's postings and this served her adult family life as well. Moki married Jazz musician Don Cherry and they toured with their children with Don performing. Her beautiful tapestries hung on stage bringing to life their lifes work, they called ‘Organic Music’. The homes they did own were full of handpainted murals. I definitely recommend you Google them her work is fascinating. It's hard not to just fill this with photos.

Moki Cherry and her desire to help others see and find the relationships that we all have with the world around us is inspiring and empowering. I feel her specialised training in Fashion & Design allowed her to speak in a Visual language that was as relevant in the 60s, 70s and remains so today.

Fashion borrows from fashion, it has been for centuries; and she drew on the essential elements of textile design and combined with her innate creativity vision was able to speak in a much needed new visual language. That she had imbued her work with the Modern power to reach off the canvas in a glance and trigger a response.

“Everything is connected and interdependent, including what we cannot see by the bare eye” -Moki Cherry 2007

Her large tapestries and how she painted the interior of her home are visually fascinating and motivating. The largess of a big piece such as a wall in your room or a big canvas has a palpable impact on our minds and bodies. When I stand within an art scene I feel energized. The image I chose to recreate for the feature image was from a photo taken of Moki and her daughter Neneh (whom I loved as a teen) in their living room. It looks like she hung 2 long strips of paper and painted on top. They wrap around from ceiling to floor. I love it. When I have a studio I am totally going to do the same thing.

For her feature art design I struggled, as I have a few too many ideas. We will revisit them down the road.

For today we are going to create Shadow Botanical Watercolors.

Moki Cherry encouraged exploring the relationships and interdependent nature of all life.

Today I want to show you how to paint with the Sun.

It's been very foggy lately and the Apricity of the sun welcome this morning in Oakbank. I pulled out my dried flowers (Live Gifts I let dry, from my Glamour Possum Peeps at the Insider's Studio) and placed them in that delicious sunlight.

Shadow Botanicals embrace the hidden relationships between the Visual spectrum and Sunlight.

Your pieces rely on the strength of the sunlight and the clouds and the fact that the sun is moving so you can't spend forever tracing.

This Organic, spontaneous art is so much fun!

Class Sample in hyperlapse:

Personal notes:

Two fun parallels occurred as I was researching my February Artists, the first was that Moki Cherry's daughter Neneh Cherry was a musician I recognized and whose music I loved as a teen, especially because it was so wildly creative and full of energy.

The second was the Tapestry created for Organic Music looked so similar to the art I was making as I researched. I was creating #insidersstudioheartsinflight paintings at the time. I knew in those moments Moki Cherry was on the list.