Embroidery by Inky Leaves
When I am not painting, I enjoy sewing. For me, sewing helps my mind - the ducking and diving of the needle can be very meditative and the freedom of expression rejuvenates me. Botanical art can be tight work. Planning out the composition and mainting a freshness of a piece does require some creative thought, but the art of depicting a specimen accurately in a three dimenional way is labour intensive. It is of course important that one keeps a fresh feeling to every botanical study, and I try to do this by having frequent breaks. If I am not walking, I fill my breaks with sewing.
A lot of my work is based on pattern. I like repetition - it helps with the meditation. However, each piece is not planned -all of my sewing is created in the spur of the moment and is made by what I call 'free-style sewing'. I draw on my imagination and sew what I am feeling. I find this to be extremely liberating.
Squares and Triangles, 2010
Meine Mandlebrot #1 - work in progress
Meine Mandlebrot #1 - close up
Meine Mandlebrot is a project I started in early 2012 and I am still working on it. It is intended that at the end of the project I will have made a series of sets, each as highly patterned as the other but consisting different colours and shapes. When I began the project I was interested in exploring patterns and looking more deeply into nature's code. The piece I am currently working on looks more like a motherboard than the traditional Mandlebrot Set, but I like the way that in essence it looks mathematical - like a crop circle or a computer chip.
The embroideries below are commissions and take on quite a different appearance:
Yogi Lion - work in progress
Yogi Lion - close up
Jessie and Jesse Wedding Sampler, 2010
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