Statement Once upon a time there was a girl and she loved to paint and glue and stick. She loved colour and pattern, nothing was more satisfying than spending hours drawing or making. There is nothing to beat the simple pleasure of bringing together materials to create an item that perhaps challenges, gives pleasure and might be useful! That girl is myself and the spontaneity with which those pictures were created is something that I strive towards. I make my work because I have to, if I didn’t the house would be full of buttons, shells, scraps of paper etc. Some would call it rubbish, to my eye it is the stuff of art.
Over the years my work has tended to be mixed media, often with stitching and layers and has tended to be figurative. More recently I have been focusing on felt-making. This is often cut up, stitched and re-felted. The process of making, the play of colours, the materials, the shapes and patterns have taken precedence. Felt making is full of serendipity, chance movements of shapes and colours in the process of making this magic has reinvigorated my artistic practice and brought into focus primary concerns.
Textiles have such a mixed bag of references and I am equally inspired by the paintings of Howard Hodgkin to South Asian textiles. My work often has references to the domestic nature of textiles or could be a decorative piece with delusions of grandeur!