Beginning
Tapestry: 66cm x 107cm (framed)
British wool on linen warp
Price: £3,450
Beginning is woven on a linen warp at 4wpi and the weft is comprised of five hand-dyed strands each spun to 2/10Nm. The tapestry is presented at 24 inches high and 40 inches long and mounted in a moulded wooden frame. Inside the frame, woven into one hem is the year (26) in binary and maker’s mark in Morse code (GP).
Beginning relies upon the dyeing and subsequent blending of individual weft threads to create colour and texture. The gradation of colour flows throughout the pictorial space enlivened by the texture weaving creates.
When contemplating creating a tapestry, I face a harrowing decision: everything is possible. Once I know what I want to say, I then face the secondary problem of how to create it.
I consider Henri Matisse to be the father of Abstract Expressionism, with the Colour Field artists his exuberant, imaginative grandchildren whose all-over compositions activate entire, lively pictorial spaces. Between these two generations are the ‘Irascibles’ such as Barnett Newman, Frank Stella, Mark Rothko. Beginning would not have been possible without Matisse, the Irascibles, and Colour Field artists such as Helen Frankenthaler, Jack Bush and particularly Jules Olitski.
I want to create art that doesn’t stop at the retina. Art that encourages thought and reflection. Marcel Duchamp asserts that the viewer’s role is to discover themselves in a work of art. Maybe Beginning will enable this, maybe not. Maybe it will simply give the opportunity to reflect on what Beginning means to them. One person’s beginning is another person’s destination. There is no end without a beginning. And is there ever an end?
