Kate Findlay kept us interested and entertained in her talk to the group this month. Kate spoke about her textile art, and she introduced us to several of her sources of inspriation which have each led to a ‘series’ of artworks. Her work features fabric collage with stitched details, often with the natural world as her inspiration, particularly plants and birds. A notable exception to the natural world as inspiration was a whole series that she made based on the ‘Hadron Collider’, the world’s biggest and most powerful particle accelerator. This work featured circles within squares, with meticulous detail featured in a series of big wall-quilts. It generated a lot of interest and was published in magazines all over the world. Other ‘series’ of work have been based on the town, river banks and people of Henley, as well as winter landscapes and birds. Kate told us about some of her processes and techniques, including showing a couple of videos of a piece of work through the different stages from initial background to main outlines, and finishing with detailed embellishment and stitch. The last photo below shows a close-up detail of a technique she calls ‘confetti’, which she uses to create texture and detail, for example in trees. There was great interest in her work, and enthusiasm to request a workshop for the group in the future.
