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Meet the artist

Originally from Ontario Canada, I trained as a graphic artist and designer at the Ontario College of Art in Toronto. After a career in publishing both in Canada and the UK, I completed a Diploma in Stitched Textiles in Britain, fulfilling an early interest in an artistic approach using fabric and stitch. 

As part of my research for the course I discovered the textiles and clothing of the Caribou Inuit in Northern Canada and it was this fascination with the Arctic landscape, and these northern people and their traditions that led to a visit to Baker Lake and Rankin Inlet and a series of work called ‘Arctic Expressions’. 

Photography, art and architecture have also inspired themes in recent work. The places where we live, work and holiday have been explored in ‘Journeys‘, including diary writings, photos transferred onto cloth - the high rise buildings, churches and holiday homes visited in the last few years.

A new theme, still based on buildings, ‘Within 4 Walls’, addresses issues of protection, security, containment and inspiration - how walls can be a haven for some, but a prison for others. Continuing with photo imagery, I have been able to incorporate brick, granite, ice, glass, stone and slate onto the surface, with buildings from the canals in Bruges, the Tate Gallery in London, sky-scrapers in Chicago to the fall of the Berlin Wall. This architectural theme is combined with ecological issues of global warming (urban cities, population and pollution) to become a new series called 'Near North'. A variety of themes and issues of concern are included in this work, from retreating glaciers to threatened woodlands. 

Transferring photographs onto cotton using an acrylic medium, has been my favoured technique over the years, but imagery isn’t enough. The use of light and shade with machine quilting and stitch are the ‘marks’ that bring the surface to life.

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