Welcome to my journal; my personal space to share
what I am through and what I do.
My way to communicate the love and motivation for nature and textiles. With my paints, colours, and threads, I aim to spread beauty and joy into this world.
Welcome to my journal; my personal space to share
what I am through and what I do.
My way to communicate the love and motivation for nature and textiles. With my paints, colours, and threads, I aim to spread beauty and joy into this world.
“British and Wild” Flora Collection are a selection of art prints and original hand embroidery and painted work on cotton canvas for home interiors. With this collection, I honour the simple and accessible beauty of this latitude wild flowers and trees in a style inspired by the memories of those illustrations in the botanical books that my mother kept from her time as a teacher. In that sense, I have chosen the texture of the organic cotton canvas with its details in its unbleached state to convey that nostalgic feeling of the old illustrations.
I have used acrylic fabric paints on the canvas top, then with different stitches I have created areas of texture with silk rayon embroidery threads giving a little shiny touch that contrast the matt quality of the cotton fabric.
“Silent Wings in the Garden” is a collection of illustrations of fairies in a conversational style; for this collection I remain faithful to the cotton canvas as a substrate that adds the texture and vintage look. I have stains of bright colours produced by alcohol inks that after being sealed, I retouched with acrylic inks and hand embroidered stitches on certain elements. Each figure has the appearance of being taken from a story of those that begins with once upon a time…
By making these colourful representations, I am not trying to question beliefs or attest that I have seen them in action, it has certainly been my playful imagination that, through illustrating winged beings in utopian gardens in blossom, elevates me beyond the concern of the moment that as humanity we live.
In times of pandemic and confinement, to be honest if something gave me peace was being able to go out in the morning for a walk and breathe fresher air than usual. Those walks that sometimes became monologues led me to reflect on the things I saw along; for example, I still remember the felicity of having found Long Timbers Wood years ago, the trail that runs parallel to the river Erme in Ivybridge. What a wonder when I saw the small doors at the base of the trees, and then when able to look out to find small gifts that hopeful children had left for their elusive winged inhabitants.
I could also observe this in Filham Park, one of my favourite places close from home. That fascination, part of the compendium of folklore and mythology, is still alive in these areas of the English countryside. Although I do not remember so much literature about fairies in my early age, at least in my native country, many stories were told about goblins, the madremonte (mother of the forest) and some mischievous witches, for whom there were methods to catch them red-handed!
This collection delivers that element of fantasy; The images are picturesque windows to look at just for enjoyment or if the viewers want, mechanisms to encourage the imagination of some other worlds that can coexist in peace with our tumultuous one.
Finally, whilst researching in this subject, it has been a delight to contemplate the representations of fairies by Cicely Mary Barker. Her illustrations will continue to be a benchmark with such a mix of natural and innocent beauty.