Page 14 - The Digital Cloth Holiday issue 2

I have been an artist most of preconceived ideas was like
my life. I haven’t always felt throwing open the doors and letting
I had the right to call myself a fresh breeze blow in. Because I
one but looking back I had no plan or vision I couldn’t
realise I have. Creating fail, I couldn’t get it wrong or
images has always been my main fall short of my own expectations.
way of responding to the world To some this might feel like
and making sense of new stepping into the abys, to me it
experiences. For many decades I was like taking flight.
have expressed myself in paint, I gathered what I already had, no
taking my inspiration from spending a fortune on specialist
nature and my emotional products, so again no pressure to
response to it, as many
artists do. I have always
dabbled in other mediums and
explored other creative
avenues and about seven years
ago I began making felt. This
was my first glimpse of a new
possibility for my art that
didn’t involve direct
observation and drawing. I
began to develop a freer more
instinctive way of working. I
have always been an
enthusiastic sewer and
cannot resist buying fabric and
hoarding scraps in a big
jumbled stash. The threads of a
new direction began to gather,
slowly converging. I was
becoming frustrated with my
progress as a painter and was
finding it difficult to work in
a free instinctive way. I loved
sewing and had begun
experimenting with using a
darning foot to embroider. I
had a big stash of unused
fabric scraps. I decided to
have a go at making a
painting from fabric. Having no
idea how, but impatient to get
started, I just launched in,
and looking back I think this
was the key. You can know to
much, wait too long to start,
dabble around the edges for too
long. Launching in
without knowledge or