Fabricating Nature...

About

I am a textile designer and artist and have always tried to combine printed fabrics with unique paintings. I use disperse dyes to paint on paper and then sublimate them onto fabric using a heat press - the result is a one-off full colour painting on fabric. Unique, malleable, colourfast and durable.

My subject matter often comes from the natural world. The sheen achieved working on satins accentuates the surface of shells and fish, petals, wings and even a frog’s skin. I love to grow plants and have a pond too, images of which I use as reference - eg.the 'Oriental Poppies',' The Frog', 'The Tank', 'AKA Fish', 'Clematis' and so on.

The watercolours in the show: Petalscape Pink and Petalscape Blue 2 are an exploration of some of these images, using a much larger scale and focussing in on detail, using paint much as I use the dyes, working on wet paper to form hard edges which merge into soft highlights and deep shadows. There is also a series of more abstract images on fabric using sprays and cut out images looking at how that medium can be stretched: 'Gulls on Black Waves', 'Zig-Zag', 'Sea Haze' etc.

My portfolio gives insight into previous work from when I lived in London, with a studio for many years in Camden Lock. There I designed garments, footwear, ties and more, often hand painted and handprinted - ‘Wearable Art’. It’s a theme I have returned to in the last couple of years. The pandemic inspired the making of masks, working with colleague Kristina Coles - see ‘Mask Story So Far’ and the two ‘Mask Collages’. The size limitation allowed me to paint mini paintings - plus they are useful which I love - ‘Wearable Art’.

The ‘Seascape’. ‘Poppy’ and ‘Koi’ silk tops evolved after experimenting painting wet silk direct - again using my photographs as reference. The process is quite liberating but scary as each brush stroke is immediately permanent, but the result is more ‘Wearable Art’.

Open Tuesday - Saturday 11 am - 5 pm