Silk paintings

Bird
Silk painting
2003 I began my exploration of textiles in 2003 with silk painting. The flow of colour combines with the lustre of silk in a wonderful visual harmony, with added tactile appeal. I also first experienced the pleasure of sharing my love of textiles with other students - Bird is a sample from class with Robyn Carver.

Fossil cushion
Silk painting
2003 The fossil cushion design was based on suture patterns of ammonites and combines techniques including gutta, wax, salt, water spray, ... everything I knew to add texture.

Fabric dyeing

Shibori sampler
125 x 96 cm
Silk, naphtol dyes
2004 I expanded my search to other ways of colouring cloth. Shibori offers a huge range of methods to compress cloth and create patterns of resist in dyeing. More classes, this time with Marion Boyling, helped to extend my skills and were my first introduction to ATASDA members.

Lightning strike and Regeneration

Lightning Strike
51 x 52 cm
Cotton, dyed and stamped, quilted
2005 In 2005 I began to introduce stitching in textile works. Lightning Strike was begun in an Expressive Quilts class with Dijanne Cevaal at Murrumbidgee School of Creative Arts.

Regeneration
214 x 304 mm
Cotton and silk
Dyed, quilted.
2005 I challenged myself through the year to create a new, A4-sized "journal quilt" each month. The first was Regeneration and combined silks and cotton using a range of dyes including fibre-reactive, naphtol and Bubblejetset (computer printed). A diary entry as well as a textile sample, Regeneration celebrated the dawn of a new period of creativity, rising from ashes, building on the past, reaching to the future.

Life Weaving

Life Weaving
30 x 30 cm
Silk, dyed, stitched
2005 In 2005 I became involved in ATASDA, producing work which was included in the Overflow exhibition.

Life Weaving used silk I had dyed together with fragments of wedding dresses - mine, my mother's and my great grandmother's (Alice Slingsby Brant, married in Yorkshire UK in 1897). I wanted to reflect on life - layered, elements repeating, changing, interconnected, unfinished. My parents met through bellringing, I met my husband the same way and now our teenage son is learning to ring. The weaving of the bells in Yorkshire Major is stitched, anchoring the shifting layers, connecting the generations. The future is veiled.

Felt

Promise
40 x 37 cm
Wool, Silk, dyed, felted
2006 Felting offers more possibilities to combine colour and texture.
 

Vessel
13 cm high
Wool, felted
2006

Blue Mountain Venus
39 cm high
Wool, Silk, carnelian, aquamarine. Felted
2007        
Earth Mother, Goddess, Sister to the Venus of Willendorf, Blue Mountain Venus was my entry to ATASDA's from the earth exhibition. The theme immediately conjured earth mother figures, in particular the Paleolithic Venus of Willendorf. A Blue Mountain Venus must surely be a column of sandstone, and a life-giving source of water.