Transitional

My graduate collection is inspired by my time during lockdown, where like many, I found myself cooped up in my room. This proved to be a challenging time as I found myself limited with both materials and space to create work that I was inspired by. As I am someone who likes to spread out and explore different avenues of creation within my practice. Throughout this project, my room became my main source of inspiration for my work. I spent most of my time reflecting on various aspects of my life and what was happening in the world, which all felt overwhelming. I often found myself laying down, observing the slow, steady transition of the daylight, intrigued by its evolution from winter to spring and gradually summer. This is where I found my inspiration rooted.

I started by observing the abstract evolving shadows projected through the windows, their shift and motion helped lift my spirits. Using photography as a tool, I captured the glorious golden sunshine which influenced my limited-edition series of paper collages titled “Transitional”. These collages informed a series of hand-dyed and hand screen printed textile art pieces that I wish to be made available for the everyday home.

I took an experimental approach towards screen printing, working freehand crafting abstract stencils using tearing techniques. This brought an evolving element to my outcomes, no two stencils were the same, reflecting the movement of the sunshine around me. This process-led journey allowed me to explore colour, material and simple shapes, where I was able to appreciate a way of working that felt freeing and liberating, opposite to how I felt during my time in lockdown. For my textile samples, I have used a mixture of dyed and undyed fabrics in silk, cotton and fine wool. I chose to use silk as I liked the lustrous qualities found from this material, whilst I also admired the grain lines found in the fine wools and cottons. I combined my textiles with some of my paper works where materials used were sourced from my local scrap store. My collection of work is abstract and minimalist, which I hope to be used as wall art that can help to uplift people’s spirits in their homes.

Photo credit to Earl Wilcox