After years of full time work as a Management Consultant I became a freelance and was able to work part time. This enabled me to do a City and Guilds in Creative Embroidery, at the East Berkshire College in Windsor. After the 4 years I went on to do a further 3 year a Higher Education Diploma in Stitched Textiles. I was fortunate in having outstanding teachers. They were inspiring and generous and enabled me to develop a range of skills and techniques and to find my “voice”.
On graduation I started to exhibit and now sell my work through galleries and at exhibitions. What started as a leisure interest became an obsession and now is a way of life that gives me great fulfilment.
My Inspiration
My passion and inspiration is landscape; woodland and waterside, fields and moorland, sea and sky. My ideas come from walking in the countryside. My aim is to distil that rich experience to its simplest elements of light, shade, line, and colour. I use fabric and thread to evoke a sense of place and the feeling of being there. My pieces also represent an inner landscape; they are my emotional response to the natural world. As I work I am reconnecting to nature in a form of spiritual practice that is very important to my wellbeing.
My early work was a celebration of the woodland and waterside around Windsor Forest, Windsor Great
Park and Virginia Water. I called these pieces ‘Elegies to an Ancient Landscape.
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I now live in West Dorset so I am discovering the delights of this beautiful area and finding ways of capturing the special atmosphere of its varied landscape. I also travel further afield to find inspiration in the UK and occasionally abroad.
I hope my pieces help you to connect with landscapes that have meaning for you.
Qualifications
2007 Higher Education Diploma in Stitched Textiles
2002 City & Guilds Creative Embroidery Part I
2004 City & Guilds Creative Embroidery Part II