Artist Statement
As a very little girl in England, I loved to look at the summer-dry fields of hay, at a flat landscape made severe by the action of harvesters. On migrating to Australia, I discovered another version of the severe rural landscape: wider stretches, dry red earth, still and flat, a harsh demanding sky. When we moved to the Middle East, there it was again, the severe landscape, dry, brittle, windswept, sand-blasted, mountain-tall.
Late in life these feelings and images were revived when I discovered that I was not, as I had supposed, an abstract painter, but a landscape textile artist. Everything I do seems to end up with a foreground, a background and a sky. It was quite a revelation, continuing to unfold as I work, continuing to confound me.
My art process, like any good terra forming, is a many-layered one. It starts with using dyes as paints on silk, muslin, fleece and spun wool. Several rounds of felting meld different coloured fleeces with fabric. I will felt them together again and again. At some point, stitching takes over as the dominant method, but more felting ensues, as I wait, ever patient, for the piece to tell me that it has had enough and is finished.
Recently, I have been working on a series of landscapes, some realistic, many quite abstract. Devoid of vegetation and animation, they are landscapes of the mind; of the reflective, attentive, internal life I live as I work on them. I think of them as "spiritual landscapes", an attempt to articulate the internal dialogue I think we all have with something greater than ourselves.
Biographical Statement
I was born in Essex, England, and migrated, with my family, to Australia in 1965, at the age of 9. I grew up in Sydney, before moving to the Middle East with my partner, marrying, having children and returning to Australia in the mid-90s.
Textile production and art of some form have always been part of my life. My childhood was spent in drawing, painting, writing, knitting, sewing and embroidery. At high school and later, at art school, I would often express my artistic ideas in textiles, which were sometimes appreciated, sometimes not. Eventually I moved into the nascent personal computer industry as a career, which lead back to textiles after having children, when I started a custom cross stitch design business whilst living overseas.
In 2000, after moving to Melbourne, Victoria, I began the prestigious Box Hill Institute Studio Stitch/Textiles course, graduating in 2002. This was the catalyst for a huge jump in artistic growth. Soon there were prizes for embroidery, felt and nuno felt, including Best Nuno-felted Mixed Fibre Scarf at the Melbourne Scarf Festival two years in a row. I was a finalist in the National Wool Quilt Prize 2004 and the runner up in Victorian Quilters' Art Quilt Exhibition, One Step Further, in 2004.
Currently, my work is on tour internationally in group exhibitions in Japan and France; in the Netherlands and Middle East and in the USA.