In 2013 I started on an art project I called Unravelled. My idea at the time was to produce ‘enough’ pieces to hire the gallery around the corner from my home and have a solo exhibition.
I completed ten pieces in the series. A few more remain unfinished, but my situation changed, like they tend to do, and then I moved.
Perhaps one day I will get those last few finished.
One day.
The pieces I did finish have been up on my walls and tucked into various corners around my home.
One was lucky enough to attend an art show and be looked at. (Way of the Wind at left.)
She didn’t sell. Mostly I thought because I overpriced her, but when I started listing them to this site I was told off by a friend that I was way under pricing my time.
Pricing is hard.
I’m not sure there’s any artists that enjoy the pricing and admin sides of their businesses. Though it is a big world and there are so many of us.
While I am happy to take offers, if you are considering offering a different price please fully consider my time.
This series began with a handful of organza ribbons left over from gift wrapping and older craft projects. They were hand sewn around a second hand frame that was bought without glass or backing.
Then I drew a picture to hand stitch over the ribbons.
The piece then had a backing featuring scrapbooking paper that I had been gifted.
Pieces varied from there with applied satin flowers or fabric backing. The smaller pieces were not woven but continued the theme with embroidered pictures.
Themes changed and while most pieces feature embroidery some are far more abstract.
The things that tie them together are less about style and theme, and more to do with the place I was in at the time.
I had just spent four years looking after my Grandmother, who was a wonderful woman that dementia had slowly eaten away at until she had little left but her determination.
In the end she struggled to remember my name.
It had been a rough time but when I started the series she had recently moved into supported care and I was at a crossroads of where to go in my life.
It was a time to weave back together the loose threads of my life that had gone astray.
It was both an exciting and frightening, as all periods of change are.
Unravelled is a series of hope featuring rich colours and hopeful imagery that sometimes leans to the macabre to explore the beauty that can exist in loss.
Pieces can be chaotic, depict classic beauty, pastels and bold colours, floral along side anatomical imagery.
Life is prone to change and growth.
At the time of writing we are sitting on the cusp of the new year. I am here with my family preparing to drove to see some midnight fireworks.
Life is about to reset into a new year, and my three kids are tired and restless.
We have a new year ready to be embraced, and we will likely begin it sleeping in!
(At least we hope.)
