The Making of 'Hoarfrost on a Still Morning: Landscape After Bevan'
This 250cm hand woven silk artwork is a development on my Deconstructed Landscape series where painted landscapes in oil are interpreted in silk, a material that both reflects and saturates light. I explore the distillation of colour in a myriad of hues as light touches and bounces off a landscape. I wanted to capture the experience I had of waking up to glistening morning dew in a frozen landscape as sunbeams hit the surface, refracting light and illuminating the scene in cool mint green. The sharp stillness of first light amplified all colour as my weavers eye interpreted the details in nature as a spectrum. I was reminded of the paintings of Robert Bevan whose expressive use of colour in natural settings conveyed both emotion and mood. This particular woven piece references Bevan’s painting “The Town Field, Horsgate”.
I hand dye the warp, gradually adding layers of colour to intensify the shifting nature of light and create movement in the tones. I then applied copper wire in a woven inlay technique, called Jamdani, taught to me by UNESCO World Heritage weavers in Dhaka, Bangladesh. It is a particularly time consuming technique but allows for delicate patterning. The overall impact of the shifting hues of the mint silk warp interacting with the plum silk weft is one of heavy shot silk dancing in the sunlight.