ARTIST STATEMENT

As a teacher of textiles for nearly twenty years, I have taught many traditional and contemporary textiles processes, naturally this exploration has fed into my own practice. Enjoying a myriad of techniques, I approach my own practice with an affinity for mixed media including printed textiles. I have an experimental approach to textiles, encompassing an array of materials that are resolved in both two and three dimensions. With an affinity for mixed media, I like to adopt the term 'bricoleur' encompasses a breadth of approaches that I employ when utilising textiles in new ways aiming to explore material boundaries through a range of research methodologies.

Surface tactility and the multiple occupy the aesthetics of much of what I make. I am drawn to the beauty in worn surfaces that appear to visually reflect the passage of time. Eroded surfaces that afford slow emerging patinas creating an impermanent aesthetic, deeply resonate and provide limitless inspiration. My practice and research leans in to ancient Japanese philosophies, that centre around the notion of transience and imperfection. These ideas have permeated my own over the past several years and now align with my own values of making.

Initially works emerged when the cathartic act of making offered some kind of solace from the loss of my father which in turn led to following the path of a practice led research masters degree where I began to explore bereavement art through an autoethnographic lens. Using textile materials, processes and methods as vehicles for conveying the emotional state during loss, I created a final body of work in 2019 in the form of cylindrical weighty voids, using felt, recycled cotton, human hair and Jesmonite.

Since then my research continues to explore the materiality of loss through process led making and research , adopting an autoethnographic approach when looking at conveying aspects of the human condition and the passage of time. Materials have always been central to my practice, in the innovative use of found 'charged' waste matter, that underpins a sustainably led practice.

My current practice is exploring the relationship between textile practice, liminality, and Japanese philosophies.

My interest in Japanese philosophies is not entirely new. During my Masters in 2019 I explored ideas surrounding wabi-sabi, material ageing and the passage of time through my process led practice. More recently, however, my research has expanded towards questions of liminality and major life transitions.