Influences on my work no.1 ~ Nature

I thought I'd give you some insights into the influences on my textile art. When I began considering the influences, I realised there are quite a lot, so there will be lots more to come! Today I'm starting with the one that probably has the biggest effect on what I do.

Nature.

When I was a child, my parents used to take me on picnics in the country or at the beach every summer. Back then, I enjoyed the days out, but probably didn't appreciate the nature that surrounded me; the plants, the trees, the views. As time went on though, I began to see the beauty and peacefulness, so much that if you put me in a field, I'm happy. :) A few hours in the country, or even in the garden, can make me feel better on a bad day and more connected to the world. That's why I love nature so much and why I feel it should be protected. We humans are part of nature, but we've separated ourselves from it so we've lost that sense of being a small part of a bigger thing.

I think it's the colours and forms of nature that inspire me, along with the patterns that can be found on flowers and leaves, for example, the colours in the sky at sunrise or sunset are gorgeous: gold, amber,rose, amethyst.

This is a photo I took of the sky a while ago:

The work I did for the final year of my degree was all about nature in contrast with man~made structures; how we clear nature away to build, but when a building is abandoned, nature quickly reclaims it. 

Here are some of my photos of the sorts of things I took for inspiration:

The colour and forms of flowers.

 The combination of natural stone being used in a wall, then being covered by ivy.

These are a few pictures of the pieces I made, a combination of the colours and forms of nature with the structure of buildings. They were hand~dyed and pleated and I used monofilament to give them shape. Some ares were slightly frayed to convey the fragility of both nature and the man~made world.

I love the art of Andy Goldsworthy because he uses leaves, stones, twigs and even ice in his work, then leaves them to nature, to be broken down by the elements. A lot of his work is absolutely beautiful.

I also love the Pre~Raphaelites and the way they used nature in their art. The plants they put in their paintings quite frequently had symbolic meanings which added an extra dimension to the story they depicted in each work.

I think I will always be inspired by nature. There are so many things out there to see; the different species, the differences in the seasons. I've been working on a piece using leaves as the starting point, but it's also become a representation of the order people try to impose on their gardens and the wilder side of nature; how people try to control it as something separate from us, but then nature does her own thing anyway. Also, it has the underlying theme of insects and birds needing wild areas to survive and how we could all leave a small part of our gardens to stay wild to benefit them.

I've used strips of material sewn with machine embroidery. I'm planning to overlay it with fine organza and hand sew it in a more natural, freeflowing way. It needs more work but once it's done, I've got many more ideas inspired by flowers.