I’m really excited to be sharing this. Its the first piece of work I’ve developed since finishing Outlander to have my second child, she is now 1 and I wanted to start making again. I signed up to exhibit at Perthshire open Studios, which starts in a weeks time (7th Sept 2019) so this has been my deadline for this new work.
The image shown is the artwork set to repeat, which is currently being digitally printed onto fabric, it’ll come back to me very soon and I’ll be making things with it thereafter. Theres a lot going on conceptually within the design, the inspriation for it was gathered around 2012 during a long trip through various South American countries. I had intended on developing this work long before, but numerous house moves, Outlander plus two children all kept me fairly busy.
I had produced a load of drawings and a screen print from some of the research material, but this is the first substantial piece I’ll have put out. I can’t wait to see it in repeat and on fabric.
I found myself less interested in the big typically touristic sites and more so in smaller, unseen, everyday, overlooked subjects. I wasn’t really aware of this until I started looking back at my photos and drawings, things like seed pods, banana plants, weeds, farm animals, trees, outbuildings. A Bolivian woman descaling fish, became central to the design. I wanted to pull her out of the photo, of the research and elevate her, above the landscape she’s part of and above the church. Something of a reclaiming of her place within her country, above the infiltrated religion that dominates Bolivia and the surrounding countries. She becomes monumental.
