It was like playing a harp...
On a big sketch on canvas, I’d decided to show the way reeds glitter in the light by way of gold embroidery.
Cody Dock is a favourite spot for a screen break tea break – so, tea bags for a colour wash. I had no idea whether this would work, in my sketchbook, which I’d bound from scrap printing paper, or on canvas.
If you think of design and illustration as technical outputs of software and AI prompts, you might be wondering if this is too much like hard work, or a hobby, with no place here.
But it’s neither – and it’s everything.
Appropriately for a post about thread, my creative practice has several strands. I reach for knowledge, curiosity and skills as I would colours. And I accept challenges as the opportunities they are to try things out. In that lies discovery and in discovery there’s value.
The piece is on show at the Tower Gallery Summer Exhibition, Memorial Community Church, Barking Road, London E13, Fri-Sun 3-7pm until 6 July. Go for the art – but go also for the building, an extraordinary 1920s ‘cathedral’ for the east end.
