I have searched through the dark recesses of my mind to find a beginning to this and I think it all started at a very young age, before I was eight or nine, with an obsession with paper dolls. You know the ones with the outfits with the little folding flaps to hold the clothes in place. I would spend hour upon hour carefully designing, drawing, colouring and cutting out beautiful families and their wonderful, colourful, fanciful outfits. I have been torn throughout my life between illustration/painting and embroidery and I think I have at last found a place where they sit together.
The two themes that run consistently through my work are
1. Tightness of the embroidery
2. Spontaneity of drawing.
My paintings are taken from the wonderful fashion photographs taken in first half of the last century and there are also some self-portraits in the same style.
I’m not one for words, I would rather just paint so I have decided to write a list to try to define my feelings towards my work.
Spontaneity
Elegance
Sensuality
Beauty
Line
Freedom
Luck
Texture