Exhibiting your textile art is a huge honour.
‘Escape’ is my third exhibition with the Timeless Textiles Gallery in beautiful Newcastle.
I thought writing about the story behind this exhibition may be interesting. Why Escape? How did I come to do all this beadwork? Where’s the machine embroidery?
The story begins with an offer to exhibit from a friend-of-a-friend, someone I didn’t know then.
I accepted; however, one of the main conditions was that the work had to be hand embroidered and colourful.
Now colour I can do, but the hand embroidery was something I hadn’t worked on for decades.
But it’s amazing what you can pull out of the bag with a deadline looming, so I picked up a needle and thread and re-acquainted myself with the rhythms of stitching.
It took four iterations before I was happy with the result and that took around eighteen months or so.
That one piece, Coral, above, began an explosion of ideas, creativity and new work that culminated in this exhibition Escape.
The premise for Escape was to highlight the creativity of a simple needle and thread and its connections with history. My techniques are simple, but the work is intricate and intensive—that’s just how I like to work.
Sampling, experimenting, making loads of mistakes and going down numerous rabbit holes, gave me the confidence to create new work filled with contrasts of colours, textures, shapes and sizes – and mixing hand embroidery stitches with beadwork offers huge scope for innovation.
Escape has a broad theme of coral and coral bleaching, all inspired by that first work. The research I did enabled me to understand this magical underwater world a little better.
It’s a world of sheer beauty and utter despair. Coral bleaching events occur worldwide and are of real concern.
I read, watched documentaries then began sketching ideas, although many of those ideas morphed and changed as mistakes became new ideas and new ideas became mistakes. That happens too.
So my needle and thread had two functions – to promote the amazing world of embroidery as a function for artistic flair and to champion this beautiful underwater world that needs our help.
That was the genesis and evolution of most of the work that has become the exhibition Escape.
And if you look closely, the entire exhibition screams contrast. I adore contrast – it not only adds visual interest, it packs a punch.
I became fascinated with dimension – with lifting embroidery off a flat surface. I experimented with recycled items such as bottle tops, cardboard bobbin cases, cotton buds, shells, hair bands and wire.
I trialled new techniques such as Stumpwork and used slips – work created separately and then applied. Some work was stitched directly onto a stretched canvas. I stitched over rings and compressed paper shapes – my imagination was in overload mode.
Thousands upon thousands of beads and stitches were used. But I knew I was moving in the right direction creating unique works that were meaningful to me and the theme I was working towards and that’s not always easy for a textile artist.
And I did include three machine-stitched pieces referencing a trip to Rarotonga for our daughter’s wedding where we snorkelled, swam with turtles and saw amazing fish and live corals.
The title Escape seemed to encapsulate my world of stitch – it’s my retreat and my passion. It’s my break from the trials and tribulations of everyday life, allowing me the time to think, innovate and produce new work as I have never done before.
Sometimes going backwards moves us forward – it did for me.
Top image by John Cliff Photography
All views and opinions expressed are my own, except where acknowledged information is included from other sources.