In Conversation With Elaine Mc Bride

When artists speak about their practice, they often describe a clear separation between the mind that conceives the work and the hand that carries it out. The idea originates in thought; the hand simply executes it.

Yet when one listens closely to how makers describe their work, something more complex appears. Decisions emerge during the act of making. Adjustments happen through touch, perception, and repetition. Knowledge seems to reside not only in the mind but in the hand itself.

This is what I have come to think of as the thinking hand—not only what the hand does, but what unfolds through the act of making, before it is fully known.

But this way of understanding making is not always shared.

Reading Elaine McBride’s reflections on her embroidery practice raised precisely this tension. Her description of decades of stitching reveals a process shaped by experience and intuition, yet one in which the hand is still described as executing decisions formed in advance.

What follows is an email conversation between Elaine McBride and myself, where this difference in understanding unfolds.

 

GN

Elaine, when I read your statement, what struck me was the time you have spent with embroidery. Nearly five decades with the needle is a long time—a duration like that changes the relationship between maker and medium. It can no longer be just about stitching.

 

EM

Gopika, you are right that the relationship to the medium deepens over time, but for me the turning point wasn’t only the years spent stitching – it was realizing in graduate school that embroidery could operate as a form of image making. Although I grew up around utilitarian textile work, I had not considered it an artistic tool until a course with Renie Breskin Adams revealed that stitches could function like painterly marks. That discovery allowed me to merge my background in drawing and painting with textile technique. From that moment, embroidery became my primary language for narrative imagery, not an extension of domestic practice. The hand and the material were part of the learning curve early on, but my focus quickly shifted toward conveying the idea through the medium rather than exploring the medium itself.

 For nearly five decades, embroidery has been my chosen medium. Since adopting it in 1978, I have refined a process that is now intuitive and largely subconscious. My work aims to reveal essential information while leaving space for the viewer’s own interpretation. Its small scale reflects both its intimacy and my sense of its preciousness.

Through long practice, I understand how colors blend, how stitch direction can imply movement or shape a sense of space, and how a single stitch can function like a painter’s brushstroke. My early training as a painter informs this sensibility; embroidery allows me to maintain that painterly language while embracing the tactile qualities of textile—surface, sheen, weight, and texture. Technique and process serve the imagery, not the other way around.

 

GN

You say that your stitching process has become intuitive and largely subconscious. I am curious about what happens in that space where intuition takes over.

What interests me here is the phrase: “through long practice, I understand.”

That kind of understanding must develop through repeated encounters between hand, needle, thread, and cloth. And the hand naturally begins to carry knowledge. You describe knowing how stitch direction can imply movement or shape space. A knowledge that seems to emerge in the doing, through memory stored in both hand and mind.

This is what I call the thinking hand—knowledge that arises through the act of making.

 

EM

I understand the idea of the “thinking hand,” but in my process the conceptual work happens before I begin stitching. I plan the narrative through drawings and compositional studies, and those decisions determine color, stitch direction, and surface effects. Because I have stitched for so many years, the physical act is automatic – the hand simply follows decisions already made. Intuition plays a role, but it grows out of long practice rather than spontaneous discovery in the moment.

I work from impressions and memories that require contemplation, and stitching has become the subconscious means by which those ideas are realized. My choices of thread color and stitch placement require conscious decision-making, but the physical act of stitching is second nature. The hand simply functions as the tool that carries out these decisions.

 

GN

Here is where I pause.

You describe the hand as carrying out decisions, yet elsewhere you speak about stepping back from the work, evaluating the emotional tone, and adjusting the palette. That suggests a more fluid exchange where progress on the work influences what the next move would be—in terms of stitch, direction of stitch, colour choice, modulation etc.

So I wonder whether the hand is only executing decisions, or whether in the act of making the hand is also shaping them.

 

EM

Stepping back is essential for me as well, especially given the small scale and close working distance of embroidery. Viewing the work at a distance helps me confirm whether the stitching is supporting the narrative and emotional intention. The hand executes the decisions, but those decisions continue to evolve as I evaluate the image during the process. My eye, not the material, ultimately guides each adjustment.  

In recent work, I’ve used muted grays and browns to evoke dreamlike spaces softened by memory. Old family photographs often serve as starting points; I gather fragments of the subject and reconstruct them in thread as recollections rather than portraits.

In Incredulous (2024), for example, I repeatedly stepped back from the piece to evaluate its emotional tone. That process led me to mute the background palette so the figure appeared enveloped in quiet ambiguity. Her skin, stitched in grays, browns, and creams, evokes statuary and timelessness.

 

GN

That moment of stepping back is something I need to do frequently. I don’t work with a drawn image, so here, it’s fundamental for me to keep gauging the next step. But you work with a predetermined narrative and drawing, yet you too stop  to look again and again. The image as it emerges suggests the next move.

In that moment, as a maker you seem to be responding, as I do,  to what the work itself reveals. The cloth and thread are participating in the decision. In the risks you may take, and in the texture and materiality of the finished piece, where the material’s intelligence is also factored in.

 

EM

I see how your process invites the work to guide the next step, but my approach is more like painting. I begin with a drawn structure, and the embroidery develops within that framework. I aim to fully cover the fabric so the surface becomes analogous to a painted panel, often drawing inspiration from illuminated manuscripts and early miniatures. Although I make adjustments as the work develops, the driving force remains the narrative image rather than the material asserting its own needs.

 

Constructing each piece is slow and deliberate. I begin with a drawing that establishes the narrative, then refine color and compositional choices while stitching. Embroidery is a low‑tech practice, and my decisions evolve from my reflections on the emerging image: warm or cool palette? Depth through contrast or subtle modulation?

 

My lived experience informs each piece, as does knowledge carried over from prior work. In Chill (2019), a cool palette in the foreground created a harsh, cold environment, contrasted with a vivid, fiery sunset on the horizon. Those visual strategies later informed Flashbulb (2023), where a warm interior contrasts with the cold night sky and ruins beyond the window.

 

GN

So the work evolves through the act of making. The drawing may establish the narrative, but the embroidery continues the thinking. Experience accumulates in the hand, and each work carries traces of earlier decisions.

 

EM

Yes, the work continues to evolve as I stitch – just as most artworks change from their initial conception. My experience with color and composition shapes every decision, and the pleasure of working this way lies in discovering how color can define form, space, and mood. Even when I have a plan, the piece still reveals surprising possibilities. That ongoing dialogue is part of what keeps the medium engaging after so many years.

In all of this, the hand remains the tool that executes the idea. It holds the needle, draws the thread, untangles knots, and allows muscle memory to support the process. The narrative and visual decisions come from decades of drawing, painting, and studying color.

 

GN

Muscle memory is an interesting phrase. Repetition stores patterns of movement in the body. After many years, the hand moves without calculation, yet those movements carry decades of experience. So, is the hand merely a tool?

 

EM

You are right that muscle memory plays an important role. It allows the hand to place stitches precisely and consistently, which is essential in such detailed work. But I still see the hand as carrying out decisions shaped by years of drawing, painting, and stitching experience. Like a potter on the wheel or a practiced golf swing, the body remembers what it has learned – but the intention and design come first.

 

GN

I’ve been inspired by many writers in craft, such as Richard Sennett to look deeper into my process. Especially Glenn Adamson observation that “craft is process” has also influenced me. It’s made me become a witness to how I hold the needle, what I do with thread; becoming aware of every decision I once made intuitively through muscle memory. Are there any writers on craft who inspire you or whom you relate to?

 

EM

The writing that resonates most strongly with me is Ben Mitchell’s The Jewelry of Ken Cory – Play Disguised. Cory’s miniature sculptures elevate the everyday through wit and close observation. His narrative approach mirrors my own interests. Mitchell notes that Cory’s works “tell a story… composed pictorially, as if the pieces had first been drawings and then were rendered in metal and enamel.”

Cory himself said, “My primary concern is the idea behind the piece. Design follows idea.” His prioritization of narrative and concept reflects how I think about my work; technique is essential, but always in service to the story.

 

GN

Your reference to Cory is revealing. You place narrative and idea at the center of the work, yet acknowledge how technique itself shapes the stitched narrative.  The direction of a stitch, the blending of thread, and the modulation of tone influence how your stories are embroidered on cloth.

 

EM

After more than forty‑eight years with needle and muslin, stitching feels as natural as breathing. I often stitch in the evenings, as my grandmothers did when I watched them quilt, mend, and embroider.

Though my studio supports the planning stages, the act of stitching has become a familiar daily rhythm. Each piece still feels like a discovery, and each new work quickly becomes my favorite until the next one emerges.

At 74, embroidery is inseparable from who I am. It is not merely what I do—it is how I know, remember, and translate experience. I want the intelligence of muscle memory and the quiet accumulation of years to register on cloth and to let memory and material meet through the simplest of stitches.

 

GN

When you say embroidery is how you know and remember, that brings us close to what I would call the thinking hand. Not the hand as a passive instrument of thought, but the hand as an active participant through which knowledge unfolds within the act of making—where the conversation between hand, mind, needle, cloth, and thread continues to evolve.

In my own work, I often begin without a fixed image. A stitch is placed, and only then does the next decision become visible. The direction of thread, the density of the surface, the way colour settles into the cloth—these are not predetermined. They emerge in response to what is already there. In that moment, the hand is not executing a plan; it is discovering the work as it unfolds.

 

 

EM

Your perspective has given me a new way of considering how the hand participates in making. Earlier in my career I may have been more aware of that connection, but now my attention is centered on constructing the narrative image. Still, I appreciate the idea that the hand holds its own form of knowledge. Continuing to stitch keeps me engaged and grounded, and I am grateful for the chance to reflect on these ideas through our conversation.

 

Crab Lace

“The greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world is to see something and tell what it saw in a plain way.”

                                                                   —John Ruskin

 

 

When the tide recedes along the beaches of Goa, particularly at Morjim and Ashwem, sand bubbler crabs emerge from their burrows beneath the sand. During high tide they remain hidden deep within these burrows. As the water withdraws, they come out to feed.

Working slowly outward from the mouth of the burrow, each crab takes tiny mouthfuls of sand, extracting organic debris and decaying matter. The cleaned sand is rolled into small pellets and deposited beside them. As they continue this quiet labour, the beach gradually fills with delicate radial fields of pellets — intricate, lace-like traces that mark where the sand has been sifted and cleaned.

These patterns are not decorative. They are the residue of feeding — the visible outcome of a process that clears the beach of organic decay.

What interests me in these formations is not simply their beauty but the logic of their making: emerging from a centre, repeated movements across a surface, and the gradual transformation of feeding residue into patterns that are lace-like—delicate, decorative yet with a physiological purpose that serves the ecosystem.

This embroidered work, that I have recently resumed, began nearly seven years ago with the observation and study of the sand bubbler crab’s behavioural tendencies.

At the time I was learning crochet and was far from adept at it. I began experimenting with the medium because it allowed me to create small bobbled forms that reminded me of the pellet-like residues left by the crabs. I did not initially consider translating these patterns into stitch. Crochet felt like the right technique for the idea.

I started by crocheting thick strands that radiate outward from a burrow-like centre. Along these strands I created pellet-like forms, loosely echoing the residue left by crabs. Each radial element was made individually over time.

Two of these strands were then stretched and lightly stitched onto a canvas mounted on an adda. The adda provides the tension and stability necessary for the work to remain open while I build a net-like structure between the strands. Without anchoring the crocheted elements to this temporary ground, it would not be possible to add further threads or develop the network of connections. Off the frame, the crocheted forms collapse into an amorphous bunch of thread.

Working on the adda also requires my body to move constantly around the frame. As the crochet structure grows, it becomes awkward to reach certain areas from one side, and I shift positions, moving around the frame or sitting on the opposite side to work. Because my studio space is limited, getting in and out of the frame itself becomes part of the process — the body slipping into the structure and then out again, without toppling the frame, in order to reach the next point of connection. I am not formally trained in Irish crochet, and many of the joins emerge through this improvised negotiation between hand, thread, and the physical position of the body around the frame. My discomfort of sitting on the floor, also determines the end result. Partly because it requires me to stop frequently, get up and stretch my legs, which in turn allows me a different perspective.

Once the strands are secured in place, I begin working into the spaces between them.

Using finer crochet threads in muted greys and beiges, I join sections across the gaps. In doing so, I draw on the logic of Irish crochet, where individual motifs are connected through a network of stitches that gradually forms a lace-like field between them.

The materials themselves play an important role in this process. I work with threads of different gauges and fibres — cotton, rayon, and Tencel — each requiring a different crochet hook and producing its own tension and texture. Some threads hold the structure, others create softness or sheen. These variations allow the lace to develop a tactile surface that goes beyond simply emulating the crab patterns.

Sometimes the connections remain light and open, formed by long chains bridging two strands. At other times the space becomes denser and begins to layer. In some areas the lace sits flat against the surface; in others it rises slightly, creating a second layer over the first. The structure gradually becomes a network of overlapping threads and textures. I didn’t like the overlapping layers, so undid them.

These decisions emerge slowly in response to the structure already present. Some areas need openness; others require closer gathering of threads. The hand moves between the strands, joining, adjusting, and undoing, allowing the work to evolve through the negotiation of its internal spaces.

The process is slow and uncertain. Each connection raises questions: how much to join, where the structure should remain open, and how the tension of one section will affect the rest. Because the piece only holds its form while stretched on the frame, every adjustment must be made with awareness of the flexibility of the eventual form. What I see on the frame, may not be what reforms in another space. Quite like site-specific installations.

The eventual shape and structure of the work is still unresolved. I am considering whether it will remain a loose structure, suspended so that its openness remains visible, or whether it might be mounted onto a translucent ground such as organza or net to stabilise it. Its scale also remains fluid. New elements can still be added, but the frame itself sets limits, requiring the work to be repeatedly removed, adjusted, and returned to the surface. And as the crochet progresses, I’m realising that It will not hold in too large a piece as I had initially intended. So, I’ve decided not to add any more radial strands.

I am not attempting to reproduce the crab's patterns. What interests me is the logic of their labour — the transformation of residue through patient, incremental action.

This idea of residue has appeared in my work before. In the Chai series, I looked closely at the stains left behind in a teacup — marks that became a metaphor for the residues carried in the mind. Those works emerged from reflecting on shame: the subtle and overt ways in which individuals are judged, corrected, or diminished by the expectations of family, society, and culture. Shame leaves traces that are not easily erased. Like stains in a cup, these experiences remain embedded within memory and emotion.

For me, the act of making is inseparable from the work of processing feelings and emotions. Visual expression becomes a way of entering that inner labour — giving form to what is otherwise difficult to see or understand. Through the slow repetition of stitch and thread, the work creates a space where emotional residues can be attended to.

Watching the sand bubbler crabs at work, I am struck by their patience. The crab does not attempt to clear the beach in a single gesture. It works through what lies immediately around it, grain by grain. Sometimes the pellets themselves are larger than the crabs that make them.

In my own work, the hand engages in a similar form of labour — attending to what accumulates: the grief that sits unspoken, the anger that has nowhere to go, the fear that returns without warning. The sand bubbler does not merely set the processed sand aside; it digests what it takes in, extracting what can nourish and releasing the rest. Something analogous happens in the slow work of making. As emotional residues are processed rather than suppressed, they lose their density. What was opaque, now finds clarity and relationships can be addressed more consciously.

At another level, it is in that clearing that something deeper becomes reachable. Jung spoke of the collective unconscious — a layer of the psyche beneath personal history, shared across human experience. The relationship we have with ourselves is the only reliable ground we carry through life, and it is only when that ground has been tended — when the accumulated sediment has been worked through — that we become capable of touching what lies beneath the individual: the part of us that is universal—wisdom that has become collectively ours—accumulated through eons of life and living.

Like the patient work of the sand bubbler crab that processes each grain of sand, leaving behind a residue that is delicate and attractive, I imagine that if we did this with our emotional stuff, hard work though it is, we’d be creating these lace-like links between us.

Whatever in our experience of living is not adequately processed—often because the labour feels tedious or time-consuming—returns through unconscious acts and words that can confound and distance relationships. The sand bubbler crabs clean our beaches, so that decaying debris doesn’t leave a stench. Perhaps we could learn something from their labour and its residue.

If my earlier works considered the stain — the mark that remains — this piece turns toward the possibility of working through those residues slowly and attentively, until they begin to form another kind of pattern.

And, I attempt this kind of work beyond my art making. Spending considerable time, often frustrated by having to do so, processing complex feelings to find some measure of clarity. I not only relate to the effort of the sand bubbler; I’m inspired by them to continue with this arduous processing of emotions. Even as I’m often told I’m intense and think too much. I look at them and wonder: do I?

Where Stitching Meets Their Words

Looking at my work—how I stitch, think while I stitch, through the lens of writers and scholars like Glenn Adamson, Tim Ingold, and David Pye, I have begun to understand more clearly what it means for me to take risks while working, and to notice the decisions I make as I go. This awareness doesn’t give me control in any fixed sense, but it keeps me engaged. It keeps me focused on what I am doing. I may not fully know yet what this attentiveness does for me as an artist, but I do know that it sustains my capacity to stay with the work. Knowledge is power, after all, and knowing what I am doing as I do it seems to strengthen my ability to trust, hold, and remain with my decisions.

Yesterday, while I was stitching, I realised a few things about how I make decisions.

What I put on the fabric to begin with determines the kind of line the stitch will take. In this particular piece, I was working with a fallen, dried leaf that had many, many holes in it. It wasn’t brittle to start with, but as I began manipulating the fabric to stitch around the leaf, it started to crumple. I didn’t want to lose that quality. At the same time, I knew I was already taking a risk by working with something so fragile.

I first tried tacking it down with small bits of Fevicol below and above, hoping that would stabilise it without flattening it completely. That didn’t quite work. Eventually, I realised I had to cover the leaf with fabric while stitching around it. That was another decision, and another risk. Once covered, the leaf would be protected for use, exhibition, and time, but it would also be partially obscured.

When I did that, I saw that the fabric softened the intensity of the leaf that I had initially been drawn to. It pushed it down slightly. I had to accept that loss. And I found myself thinking that this was not really a loss at all. When you look at water flowing over sand ripples, with sunlight glinting on the surface and a leaf lying underneath, nothing is fully visible anyway. The leaf is dried and has no reflective power, so this softening felt appropriate. There is gold all around it, reflecting light, and the translucency of the organza fabric helped tone down the intensity of the gold, even though I quite enjoy it, as it is.

On top of the sheer fabric covering the leaf, I worked a lot of buttonhole stitch. It created a lace-like quality while also holding the fabric down. This wasn’t planned in advance. It came from a previous work where I had liked the effect, and I chose to return to that result here. I had been somewhere before. I remembered what this stitch could do, the kind of structure and openness it creates. At the same time, I have done oodles of this kind of buttonhole stitch, building hexagonal, lace-like forms, so there is also familiarity in the hand. As David Pye puts it, “the workmanship of risk is that in which the quality of the result is not predetermined, but depends on the judgement, dexterity and care which the maker exercises as the work proceeds.” That feels exactly right here. Present decisions are never innocent. They are shaped by past outcomes. The risk I take is always taken with precedent — something I have done before, learned from, and enjoyed the result of.

I have worked with buttonhole stitch in different ways. Sometimes I create a hole right through the fabric, which I’ve done twice in this small piece. At other times, I only create a hole on the surface fabric and then work an intense buttonhole stitch around it to strengthen that opening. From there, I extend it into a kind of hexagonal, lacy structure. I learned this approach in a workshop with the Stitch Club, with Mirjam Gielen.

I also noticed that I was doing split stitch on one side of the leaf, on the organza overlapping it. The fabric doesn’t cover the leaf completely, and it isn’t stitched flat onto it either. It has a slight three-dimensional quality. Because of the buttonhole stitch along the edge, it curls. I can curl it whichever way I want. Sometimes you can see through it, sometimes you can’t. It depends on how you look. When work is exhibited, it’s usually seen straight on, at eye level, and these shifts might not be immediately visible unless you look closely or from underneath. That too is a risk I’m willing to take.

Sometimes, one loses a lot of the stitch quality during exhibition viewing. Particularly the subtle dimensions of stitch which give so much pleasure. In fact, when stitched work or textiles that are exhibited dramatise to stand alongside more visceral media, eclipsing the otherwise delicacy of the medium and its making methodologies, I often cringe. One aspect of working with textiles, for me, is how the meditative dimension of making absorbs the visceral emotive dimensions of the maker, sublimating rather than screaming. I know that stitching for hours together calms the mind, softens the heartbeat, so I do wonder at this.

While stitching this section, I had started with a very light green thread, but I couldn’t find it again later. I didn’t want to open my entire thread stash just to locate that colour. I chose to continue with what was lying nearby. The next green I picked up was much brighter, and I didn’t want it to dominate. So I worked split stitch in lines, leaving spaces in between. Later, I added a very light blue.

Only after doing this did I realise that if I had filled the area with a single green, it wouldn’t have looked as alive as it does now. This decision came partly from laziness, but it turned out to be the right one. I do this often. When a thread runs out, I don’t stop the work. I respond to what is available. The work changes because of that choice.

Louis Pasteur, the French chemist had observed that “Chance only favours the prepared mind,” enabling one to  correctly interpret, or integrate unexpected results, with one’s prior knowledge. To my mind, chance is also about taking risks, where as David Pye suggests that the “workmanship of risk” depends on the discretion and dexterity that arise from knowing, enabling the maker to use the risk to their advantage, or not. In relation to this piece, the element of ‘chance’ is working with a dried leaf that might tear or collapse. The chance is covering it with fabric and accepting that something of its intensity will be lost. The chance is running out of a thread and choosing not to stop, but to continue with what is at hand. These are real risks. They only work because the hand is prepared, because it already knows how stitch, colour, and material behave. Without that preparation, the same choices would simply be random and possibly unsuccessful—visually gawky.

I also tend not to work with long lengths of thread. This is something I learned from Tom Lundberg during my Fulbright in 2000, when he was my mentor. Short threads force change. Colours shift more often. There is modulation rather than control. That variation keeps me attentive. It keeps the hand thinking.

I finished this section of the piece with a very fine gold thread that I bought online. It’s good-quality thread. I can’t really do split stitch with it, but I can do stem stitch, which is very close, and that worked well.

What’s amazing me at this point is how looking attentively at how I make, even in a small section as this —which is not quite two inches, I’ve learnt so much — something that reading the craft stalwarts and scholars alone, didn’t do. Quite frankly, the writing confused me, but now, I’m discovering it anew.