Bird Portraits

Grey Heron, 2015

Since January I have had some of my work on display in Gallery Artemis in Cockermouth. This has been a really good experience for me for several different reasons. Firstly it's always a good confidence boost if someone else likes your work and wants to show and sell it, secondly it's given me a good reason to get on and do more work and thirdly it's made me concentrate more on how I present my work. And of course it's always good to sell some work and make a bit of money!

Wren, 2015

Blackbird, 2015

Bluetit, 2015

Knowing that I'll need to frame my work to take to the gallery has meant that I now consider the scale I'm working on a bit more carefully. In one sense this places limitations on what I'm creating but in another way it gives me some boundaries to work within and can make me focus a bit more.

Scruffy Crow, 2015

Tree Pipit, 2015

Swallow, 2015

The first pieces of textile work that I took to the gallery were either quite large or very heavily embroidered (or both) and so as a consequence were quite expensive. I also took a small machine embroidered picture of a Black Redstart which was less expensive as it did not take me as long to create. This piece sold fairly quickly and so the gallery owner suggested I did some more smaller, quicker pieces in time for the Christmas (sorry to use the c word.) So, I took her advice and did a series of machine embroidered portraits of some of my favourite birds. This seems to have been a good move as two of the pieces have sold already!

Black Redstart (I forgot to take a photo of the finished piece!)

These pieces are a different part of my work; smaller, more controlled. I still have my ongoing interest in crows and my desire to make big drawings and layered and embroidered pieces and I will continue to develop this work but making the bird portraits helps me develop my skills, explore my love of birds and get my work out there. Everything is connected and these pieces are just one of the strands that make up my work...