Inner World Inspired

The Coat (2022)
***65 cm X 65 cm X 20 cm***
**Woollen coat, embroidery cotton thread, silk ribbon, silk thread, fabric paint, cork, linen, printed organza and a little teddy bear!**
The Coat carries a family story. My parents immigrated to South Africa with two little boys, my brothers, aged two and three. They each had a coat and this is one of them. It has been embellished with symbols and motifs that embody the heritage from which I have emerged. It carries the threads of connection to the culture, to our family and to the incredibly enduring journey my parents undertook to give their children a better future.

The Toll (2022)
***30 cm X 700 cm***
**Hand dyed cheesecloth, cotton stabiliser, batting, perle cotton embroidery thread and a Swarovski crystal**
A simple stitch marking each death due to covid in the UK, starkly, in rows and rows and rows.
The work has been purposefully left un-edged, uneven and unfinished in sympathy with the rawness of the subject matter. The needle, still with thread, left on the last row as part of the work. The colours red, black and grey amongst the white representing the anger, pain, bleakness and loss in those affected by each death.
The Toll was started on 29 January 2021 when the death toll in the UK reached 100,000
The 100,000 stitch is marked with a Swarovski crystal.
The piece consists of 520 rows and holds 145,046 stitches. This number of deaths was reached on 24th September 2021.
The final stitch was stitched on 18 June 2022.

Covid Notes (2020)

A set of four, each 33 X 33 cm

Stitched letters on cheesecloth

Expressing the feelings and thoughts that emerged during the first months of 2020

Fitting in (2020)
***90 cm X 90 cm***
**Monoprinting on hand dyed cotton, fabric paint, appliqué and heavily machine quilted.**
It’s an odd image: a person contorted in a watering can plus a sunflower! Well, it’s a metaphor for what I see as the process of conditioning.
It happens to us all, particularly so during the vulnerable years of our growing up, but not only then. We are conditioned to fit into all sorts of ways of thinking, ways of being and ways of behaving.
Needing love, affection and protection to survive we will contort ourselves into any shape to remain alive. And so we adapt to what is necessary to be loved, to be accepted, to be recognised, to feel valued, to have friends, and not be alone.
Written in four languages to reflect the cultures I imbibed as a child, the background text reflects the thoughts around the many reasons involved in the process of conditioning while the foreground text reveals the all too often notions of what we are conditioned to believe.

A-mending the Script (2020)

12 cm X 270 cm

Cotton, ink drawings, hand stitched embroidery, appliqué, ribbons and trimmings

Consisting of multiple images of smiling and non-smiling sunflowers this work is a colourful, fun looking strip as if a child’s sampler piece. The sunshine child is the bright looking, attentive, caring, considerate and always smiling child. This behaviour brings much appreciation and reinforcement from those surrounding them and can easily become an unconscious way of being. This piece is a playful yet serious depiction of choice: when to smile and when not to smile. It’s saying “I will smile when it’s true. I will be real with my smile”