For people interested in my career over the last 30 years, this is a selection
of slides showing the development of my work through a series of experimental textiles, hand
embroidery, sketches, machine embroidery and silk painting.
You can see pieces from my days at Shrewsbury Art School 1974 to 1976 where my primary interest
was hand embroidery, more mark-making with threads than conventional embroidery and detailed
pencil drawings.
During my 3 years at Goldsmiths I developed my interest in textiles further experimenting
more with hand embroidery, dying fabric, batik and free hand machine embroidery.
I produced a series of sketches and fabric samples exploring the idea of manipulating and
embellishing ready printed fabrics culminating in a silk hand embroidered shawl.
With a strong emphasis on drawing throughout the course, my love of landscapes and trees was
the main inspiration, I investigated detail, depth and perspective.
Fascinated by distant detail and copses of trees I filled sketch books with pencil studies.
I produced lace like trees in machine embroidery on soluble fabrics and used them in layered
landscapes within box frames, I sandwiched machine embroidered trees between sheets of perspex
to create perspective with physical depth.
I combined dyed silk collage and machine embroidery, imagery included cut and layed hedges
and skeletal winter trees
I moved into The Barn Studios in 1982 and produced landscape pictures using silk collage and
machine embroidery. I made cushions, bags, waistcoats and quilts based on embellished and
appliqued printed fabrics.
Moving on from working from sketches to colour photography in the mid eighties I started to
paint the backgrounds for my machine embroideries, expanding my subject matter to gardens
and woodlands, the same fascination with achieving depth and perspective in my work continued.
Working from photographs allows me to capture moments in time, I draw directly on to the painted
silk with stitches thinking and working like a painter creating colour and texture. |
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