I cannot look at fabrics without touching. The way they move by crumpling, folding, tearing, shrinking, fraying. They never stay the same and working with them is intensely personal.
My approach to my current creative practise is meditative and intuitive but this was not always so.
I was born and brought up in Manchester, UK in the 1960s and 70s. Manchester’s rich history of cotton textiles was unknown to me for most of that time even though I went through school showing a skill for ‘art’. In my school, this was what you studied – art. I had an excellent art teacher who made all my lessons stimulating and interesting, but the art exams we took were only drawing and painting, so that is all I did. I did this instead of studying other subjects, much to my parent’s chagrin, and I love drawing and painting to this day.
My father was an architect, and he loved the architecture in Manchester. He had a passion for the watercolours of Russell Flint. Both my sisters are creative and skilled in drawing and one of my sisters and my mother are exceptional seamstresses. So, there was a definite creative streak running through my family. However, my parents loved history so, as a family, we visited museums rather than art galleries.
I went to Manchester Polytechnic (now Manchester Metropolitan University) to complete my art foundation course and then I studied Graphic Design and Illustration at Kingston Polytechnic (now Kingston University). These were formative years when I discovered the joy of going to art galleries, which I still love to do, looking at other forms of art and creativity and learning about the influences of well-known artists as well as those of my peers.
I was very lucky to gain a place to study Illustration at the Royal College of Art in the 1980’s in London where I had the privilege of learning from well-known illustrators at the time including Quentin Blake. I was able to experiment and develop my way of working, preferring to make layers of collage using acrylic paint, paper and fabric. I think my tutors were concerned that my style was a little too abstract and they supported me and my work. After leaving, I embarked on a career as a commercial artist for about ten years during which time I worked for design companies and magazines. At the same time, I was also developing my personal work as paintings following my own themes such as interpreting space and spatial freedom which I identified with much more. These themes continue to occupy my current work. I found the constraints of making commercial work and answering other people’s creative questions increasingly physically, emotionally, and creatively difficult to do.
Also at the same time, I began to travel a great deal more to countries with wonderful, rich, cultural heritages such as China, Vietnam, India and Russia. This inspired me to become a teacher so that I could explore more of the world while working and creating at the same time. This was the masterplan – teach, create, move onto to another country. Travelling and teaching excited me very much and opened up new horizons. However, paradoxically, my creative work went into hibernation as my first teaching job took me to Japan where I met my husband and where our daughter was born. My life went into a delightful, sensory overload, taken up with looking after my family, learning Japanese and learning about the Japanese culture and way of life. My husband is from Kyoto, once the capital of Japan, steeped in history and traditions, full of gardens, the bamboo forest, palaces and shrines and the home of Kabuki theatre.
Altogether, I spent five years living just outside Tokyo in the late 1990’s. My experience of Japanese culture and way of life was mostly of precision, order, and efficiency. A train arrives reassuringly on time at the exact spot marked on the platform without fail. A little more stressful is making your child’s packed lunch which must be done in a specific way. It took a lot of time for me to get to know, understand and adapt to all the details present in a different culture that I took for granted in my own culture.
My discovery of the aesthetic of wabi sabi in a variety of forms was extremely gradual throughout my time in Japan. I did not understand for some time that what I was seeing had a name. Wabi sabi has been described as ‘flawed beauty’ and ‘the beauty of the imperfect, the impermanent, the incomplete’. As art forms, it can be seen or experienced in different ways for example, in Ikebana (flower arranging), Japanese Zen gardens and Kintsugi (broken ceramics mended with lacquer mixed with gold) to name a few. It also includes Boro, or ‘rags’ or ‘something tattered or repaired’. This is repairing textiles by patching and stitching, and it was practised by poor workers and farmers in Japan who could not afford new clothes or bedding. They needed to repair them over and over again. I have seen many isolated examples over the years. However, more recently here in London, I saw a large collection of authentic Japanese Boro textiles including bedding, clothes, bags and shoes for the first time.
The rawness of Boro, its simplicity and the organic way items are mended and assembled using this technique resonates with me. There are no rules. Yet, it was not until many years later back in my home country with my family when this began to permeate my creative thinking. I reached a point where my life experiences urged me to re-generate my creative voice and answer my own creative questions. To begin with, I think I was looking for ‘a place to go’ that was just mine to think, to heal, to cope, to make decisions and so on. There was and still is a great deal of happiness and fun, but it is the dark times in life such as death and illness that require an escape route. I had never stitched before, so this is how I started - I collected together different bits of fabric that I already had, created a simple composition, and began to stitch.
I quickly understood that my intention was to use stitching as a mark making tool. I started by using a double thickness of thread but soon realised that a single thread was a base – it makes a sensitive mark on its own but it can also be built upon. Double and overstitch, couch, back stitch, blanket stitch can all be added to a single thread. Stitches are a language and when I see them emerge on the fabric, they have a very clear definition even when I am not sure what I am trying to make.
In my mind, my first series of ‘stitchings’ was entitled ‘Somewhere to Go’ because these beginnings became my new place to go to find my peace and my freedom to create. Only a few of these pieces of work as I first made them still exist. Over time, I have re-examined them, deconstructed them, stitched over them, painted on them, added parts of them to later works …..and also hidden them away not to be found again.
‘Another Country’
I believe my work took on a more sustained meaning for me during the COVID lockdown when I made a collection of six hangings entitled ‘Another Country’. In the UK, we were allowed to go outside for exercise breaks and these hangings are tactile responses to the spaces I found myself in not so far from my home. Like most people, I had to think about the term ‘self-isolation’ which became an integral part of our pandemic vocabulary. There is a solitude about each hanging, but they also have a connection to each other, and they can be placed in any order. I liked to imagine I was walking through each terrain alone with my own thoughts and wondering if I can cross this boundary or venture through these contours. In many of the hangings, I asked myself ‘yes I am allowed here but how will I get over to that side?’ This was also when I began to think about my work as physical and emotional maps. This is quite natural to me as, having spent most of my life living in big cities, I am interested in interpreting space and spatial freedom. As physical maps, I zoom out to show satellite-like images of spaces and zoom in to show close ups of details of stones or pavements. As emotional maps, I attempt to represent thoughts, worries and musings. At the time, I was certainly contemplating where we are going to find ourselves.
‘Our Paths Don’t Cross’
In this vein, I made ‘Our Paths Don’t Cross’ where I continued to look closely at my immediate urban environment and how we were now being asked to behave to protect ourselves. It is a space to walk and pass through, an open territory with hidden and defined boundaries but it also resembles a shroud - a very uncertain time for everyone. While I was making this piece, I was developing the freedom of printing and painting on fabric with acrylic paints, adding applique in the form of fabric tapes, offcuts and edges cut from other pieces of fabric and working with new textures such as the stiffness of the paint together with the soft fabric. My stitching responded accordingly.
‘There is Beauty in the World’
A further series of work entitled ‘There is Beauty in the World’ focused on the chaos and the order in my urban environment, such as broken tiles, cracked pavements, weathered wood, crumbling walls. I think the imperfections, accidents and mistakes that manifest around us show a frailty in life which is transient as well as a strength. I have favourite walls and pavements close to where I live that I like to look at. Case in point, spilt paint by a bus stop near my home which I have photographed many times. This paint spillage has inspired a wealth of pieces I have made using parts of shopping bags, remnants and my old clothes. For these works, I prepared many pieces of fabrics by painting, printing and staining. Then I spent a great deal of time placing them together before hand stitching. I am comfortable unpicking, cutting up and tearing off parts that do not quite work. The commercial artist in me has a need to create a composition.
‘The Discarded’
Similarly, I often photograph discarded objects such as card, boxes, wrappers and cord just as they have been left on the road, in gardens and on pavements. ‘The Discarded’ is a series of work I made based on all the ‘accidental compositions’ I discovered by chance. I can see shapes, tones and textures that inspire me to make something, and I am attentive to the beauty of their impermanence. I always have the hope they will not be there the next day and that I have managed to capture them in while it lasted.
Stripes and lines
Almost all my work features some kind of attempt to make stripes in different ways, with tape, string, thread or print and I sometimes use cloth that is already striped. There are also many overlapping, tangled lines and contours in all of my pieces. When I am stitching, I think about breaking these lines, strengthening or weakening them, changing their direction and crossing the boundaries that lines create. When a line is broken, a new space opens up.
‘Meeting Place’
I use my sketchbook as a place to collect, store and process images and ideas I have found. I try things out, make compositions and write. What I do in my sketchbook is a starting point which triggers other things. I made ‘Meeting Place’ after looking at prints I had made using sponge prints washed over with inks on paper in my sketchbook. I usually like to cut organically and intuitively to make new shapes – but somehow, I found myself cutting up the paper into equal(ish) squares then made 4 rows of 3 squares each. When I adapted this idea to fabric, there were a lot of parts I did not like but I kept printing and staining and cutting until I made the composition I wanted. There are bold white streaks that are sometimes linked together by stitched clusters or couched lines. I have attempted to make some symmetry, but this has been intentionally interrupted by the patches and lines. The concentration of red and cream stitched thread and string in the middle is where we can meet but it is not contained. We can move about, and we can leave the space if we want to.
‘I can wear what I want’
I often use my own old clothes and clothes from thrift shops as a base for a composition. I am guided by the defined edges of seams, hems, cuffs and collars to begin with which I can contrast with the raw, frayed, cut up edges. The outline is always irregular. While I am making these pieces, I am acutely aware I have deconstructed a highly technical piece of work and I have wondered if I am reacting to the fact that I cannot make clothes myself. I enjoy looking at sewing patterns because they resemble maps, but they are also instructions which I am unable to follow.
‘Tiles’
I was inspired by the design of the tiles in the British Museum, London – a place I have been a member of and have visited for many years. I became interested in an arrangement of dark central tiles surrounded by larger pale tiles. But I noticed that, within this arrangement, no two dark tiles are the same, so I set about making my own versions using off cuts of stained and printed fabric. There are six pieces in all – I wanted to propose a deviation or a possibility of changing direction so, while four of the tiles are similar, two break away from this - one is in reverse and one suggests a corner. I still have not decided whether they should be shown separately or together and, if together, which order? And should they be on the wall or on the floor?
I am developing my own personal love of exploring fabrics to answer my own creative questions. A pattern is emerging. I choose and collect fabrics, mostly remnants, old clothes and found fabrics. I paint and stain them. Then I spend time piecing them together, constantly cutting up and positioning them until I have a composition I like. Finally, I begin to hand stitch. My stitching responds directly to the surfaces I have made, a relationship forms between them and, as time goes by, each part of a piece I work on begins to connect with another part of the piece. I often start to make many pieces at the same time, keeping them ‘on the go’ until I am ready to concentrate completely on finishing.
I do not have a large repertoire of stitches – only really using running stitch, back stitch, blanket stitch and couching. I often stitch clusters by using thick thread or cord as a base and a chaotic over-stitch with finer threads. I have recently enjoyed the effects of painting ink directly onto the compositions I make to watch the leakage emerge. There is an unpredictability in this approach which provides another dimension to how my stitching will respond. The possibilities are endless.
I have often read that textile work tells stories and there are many wonderful examples, old and recent, that I admire greatly. Currently, I think my work is narrating a story of sorts that might only be clear to me. I have yet to show my work in any kind of professional arena, so my plan is to continue to strive for the perfection of imperfection.
