I was excited to think about the subject matter “Reflections” when we decided as a group to use this title. I had already been working on a body of work depicting tree reflections in water and had been experimenting with this theme using different techniques.
For this challenge I wanted to move further into abstraction by reducing the piece to its simplest marks. I spent some time photographing, drawing and painting tree reflections on water and established that the marks were primarily parallel and horizontal.
Part of my current practice involves starting with small pieces of cloth or fibre, sewing these together and being surprised at the end product! It’s the opposite of considering a starting design and working towards that, and there needs to be a certain amount of faith and trust that the process will reveal something worthwhile, although for this project I wanted also to portray the vague form of willow trees.
Deciding on a colour scheme of shades of spring green was my starting point, and creating the sense of wind on the water was done by wrapping each strand of wool on the sewing machine to create thousands of wobbly strands. These were then sewn either by hand or machine to a backing cloth.
This piece will be exhibited as part of the Out of The Fold ‘Reflections’ series at The Guildhall, Bury St Edmunds 23rd – 28th September, and then with the group and ArtContex at The Minories 2nd – 5th October.
