Lockdown Art - Travel without leaving home.
My family all live abroad, in USA and Australia. I visit them as often as I can and take lots of photos. I tend to make one wall hanging a year as a memory piece, using fabric bought while on holiday. There will be no holidays this year, so in a nostalgic mood I started looking through my many photos. It occurred to me that some of them would make good stitched fabric pieces, so I selected a few. These would be the inspiration for my Lockdown series “Travel Without Leaving Home”.
There are six pieces in the series, inspired by photos taken in Scotland, America and Australia. They wouldn’t have been made without lockdown, and I look on them as my silver lining.
Life is still uncertain, and I can’t say that there won’t be another lockdown, and perhaps more pieces, but that’s it for now.
Travel Without Leaving Home one – Cairngorms Boulder.
Photo taken in 2010, Cairngorms National Park. Lichen on a boulder. This is Scotland for a change - I visited the area in October that year, staying on my own in a hotel. I did a lot of walking and reading, including walking up to the funicular railway station to catch the train to the ski centre for lunch. I found this boulder in the national park and was fascinated by the different coloured lichen growing on it. Fabrics act as blocks of colour and I then stitch on the fabric in layers of different coloured thread, one colour at a time. There might be 10 or more layers, and I use the sewing machine like other artists use pencils or a brush.
The thread in my pieces probably costs more than the fabric, and I have at least 60 reels at any one time – but, obviously, still need to go out and get more when I can’t find the exact colour I want.
Free-machine stitching on cotton fabrics, 6-inch square, framed.
Travel Without Leaving Home two - “Kosciuszko St. Stained Glass”.
Photo taken in 2017, Kosciuszko St. Subway station, Brooklyn, New York. My daughter and her husband live on Kosciuszko Street, and I’ve spent a lot of time on the platform waiting for the J train. Most of the stations on this line have their own decorations, and I particularly love these brightly coloured stained-glass panels. I’ve used silks for this piece to recreate the brilliant colours of the glass. The individual pieces were bondawebed onto a black cotton background and stitched in place with a matching thread. I’ve had to work on my drawing skills during lockdown – my day job is in Cupar library and I usually make use of the A3 photocopier to enlarge my image. This was no longer an option, so I had to scale up by hand. I was asked if this was a Hemp plant
– all I can say is that it comes from a
subway station in Brooklyn, so anything is possible.
Silk and cotton fabric, 18x19 inches, unframed.
Travel Without Leaving Home three “- MorningStar”
Photo taken in November 2016, in the Brisbane City Botanical Gardens. The subject of this picture was Morning Star II, a huge mirror stainless-steel installation by the American artist Jon Barlow Hudson. It reflects the scenery around it, but the mirror sections are all at different angles, so it gives a wonderfully distorted view. Drawing this one involved the use of a protractor – who knew geometry would prove so useful! Morning Star itself was stitched separately, and all the details on the sections are created by free-machine stitching. I made the background and then added on the Morning Star. I think there are 16 different coloured fabrics in this, mainly browns and greens, most commercial Batik or Moda Grunge. The rock plinth that MorningStar sits on is one piece of fabric, but I’ve used the old drawing trick of dark, medium and light thread to make it 3-dimensional. I spent 7 weeks on this piece – I lost heart somewhere in the middle, but am pleased with the end result.
All my landscape pieces have stitched birds in them and this one has an Ibis. You see these birds all over Brisbane, along with large signs saying: “Do not feed the Ibis”. Imagine a seagull, but with long legs and a long beak, tall enough to steal the sandwich off your plate while your back is turned. They are known locally as “Bin Chickens”, but do look very elegant in the air.
Cotton fabrics and stitch, 22 inches square, unframed.
Travel Without Leaving Home four - “Met Cloisters Grisaille window”
Photo taken November 2015, the Met Cloisters Museum, New York. I took a photo of a Grisaille stained-glass window when visiting the museum with my daughter. It is dated at around 1270-1280 and features an intricate and complex pattern painted in black lines onto colourless glass. There is a limited amount of coloured glass – the red circles and blue latticework overlaying the pattern.
This is very different from the last stained-glass piece. I have adjusted the original to be one square section. The window glass is plain calico and the Grisaille detail is free-machine stitched with black thread. This was very complicated (the museum describes it as “one of the most intricate and complex patterns found in grisaille windows of the period.“), and I drew it out freehand on paper before tracing it onto the calico in pencil. I then followed the lines, but the design consists of unders and overs (like Celtic knotwork) which made it much harder to stitch.
This was the difficult part - the rest was simple, just adding the red and blue silk. I put on a deep border and used perspective lines to suggest the glass is recessed into a stone wall. This was quick compared with the last piece – only 3 weeks to sew.
I wanted to try out a new technique with this one and have mounted it onto a 20-inch canvas. This will make it easier to hang and helps with the window illusion.
Calico, cotton and silk, 20-inch square, mounted on canvas.
Travel Without Leaving Home Five – Pittenweem Lighthouse.
Photo taken June 2017, Pittenweem.
Most of my time off is spent sewing, and I tend to go abroad for holidays, this means I don’t get to see as much of our beautiful country as it deserves. So on this occasion I decided to visit Pittenweem for the day. I took lots of photos around the harbour and beach, and particularly liked this one of the old lighthouse. I love the patterns made by the stonework.
In terms of fabric, this piece has very few elements – the sky, stonework, lighthouse itself and the verdigrised cap. The harbour wall and the base of the tower are heavily stitched – all the individual stone blocks and the mortar between them have been created with free-machine stitching. The white fabric was one I had painted years ago (City & Guilds), but I turned it over and used the back which worked well.
The bird for this was obvious, it had to be a seagull.
Although part of the series, this piece was always destined for the Fife Art Exhibition 2020 (where is was Highly Commended), as the theme was “Coast and Coastal waters”. Having experimented with the Grisaille Panel, I mounted this on a twenty-inch canvas. I fitted it with D rings, strung cord and it can now be easily hung and displayed.
Stitched cottons, 20 inch square, canvas mounted.
Travel Without Leaving Home six – Australian Day Lilly (Yellow Flower).
Photo taken November 2016, Brisbane City Botanical Gardens. The same time and place as MorningStar – I am truly inspired by nature and there is little better than a botanical garden for seeing so much variety.
This flower appealed to me because of the colours, yellow, orange, red. The working title for this was “Yellow Flower”, I love nature but plant identification is not one of my skills. Luckily my sister was able to identify it for me.
The flower is made up of one piece of yellow batik fabric, with a black cotton centre. It is stitched with red, orange, black, yellow and white thread to get the detail and shading.
It’s always exciting to see the flat 2D fabric turn into a 3D image, just through layers of stitch.
The background fabric is one that I bought in Australia, featuring little boomerangs.
Stitched cotton, 12-inch square, framed.
You can see more of these pieces in the gallery, along with prices.
Well, Lockdown didn't finish there, and neither did I. I moved on to a new theme - based on photos taken during my exercise walks. I'm calling this series "Views from Home", and my first piece comes from my fervent desire for coffee!
Views from Home One - Over the Howe and Far away.
I live in Auchtermuchty and there is a community shop in the next village, Dunshalt, that does a great take-away latte. I got into the habit of walking over once a week, across the fields and back along the road. That's about 3 miles and I felt I earned my coffee and cake. There are great views over the Howe of Fife towards the Lomond Hills, and I took a photo in October 2020 of waterlogged fields.
This is the result, the three birds are Pink-Footed Geese which we see in their multitudes at this time of year. The water on the field is a stitched sheer fabric.
Views from Home Two - Winter on Birnie Loch
One of my favourite walks is around Birnie and Gaddon Lochs, near Collessie. They are nature reserves, full of birds, animals and plants, and I love watching the changing seasons reflected in the surroundings. Early in January this year (2021), the lochs had frozen over and it made a magical scene.
Much of my work features water - seas, oceans, lakes and even flooded fields, but I had never tried to stitch ice. I used layers of sheer fabrics and silks to give it a shiny look. The background trees are all stitched, as is the grass/reeds.
There are two swan families here, one on each loch. They are so graceful on the water, but look a bit strange on land, or ice. The photo is one taken on a previous cold day, but it seemed appropriate to use it for my signature bird in this piece.
Stitched cotton, silk and sheers, 23 x 18 inches
Views from Home Three - Pylons in the Mist
My go-to walk is from my house, over Auchtermuchty Common and back. It's two miles, uphill on the way out, and a downhill stroll home.
I've seen the countryside in all seasons and all weathers. The inspiration for this piece was a photo I took on a very foggy day, with mist filling the valley. Appearing out of the mist, and striding off into the distance, were these pylons. They looked like alien machines, something from Mars perhaps. The colour palate of this is very restricted, all blues. It's not my usual style, and I had to resist the urge to add in a complementary colour, but I achieved the effect I was looking for - almost Impressionist.
The signature stitched bird is here, although sometimes I think it's really a far-away dragon!
Stitched cotton, silk and sheers, 23 x 19 inches
Views from Home Three - Pylons in the Mist
My go-to walk is from my house, over Auchtermuchty Common and back. It's two miles, uphill on the way out, and a downhill stroll home.
I've seen the countryside in all seasons and all weathers. The inspiration for this piece was a photo I took on a very foggy day, with mist filling the valley. Appearing out of the mist, and striding off into the distance, were these pylons. They looked like alien machines, something from Mars perhaps. The colour palate of this is very restricted, all blues. It's not my usual style, and I had to resist the urge to add in a complementary colour, but I achieved the effect I was looking for - almost Impressionist.
The signature stitched bird is here, although sometimes I think it's really a far-away dragon!
Stitched cotton, silk and sheers, 23 x 19 inches
