'Drawing as Tapestry', a retrospective view
My first solo exhibition, at Signal Arts Centre, June 23-Jul 6, 2025, was a success on many levels, both hoped for and unexpected. This post is a form of reflection, looking back at how it unfolded and what was learned.
Published July 14, 2025
Coastal backdrop
Early in 2021, some time after completing a thesis in which woven textiles were a central motif, I found myself walking more than usual along my local beach. It was the time of Covid lockdowns and I was making the most of the good fortune of living in a coastal location. In processing the findings of my research, lines, both curvilinear and straight, had appeared in the visual explorations I was doing at the time; mainly shorthand notebook experiments rather than finished works. Observing that waves break on the shore in an infinite variety of ways, and yet invariably wash back out in straight lines, I had the notion that the sea meeting the land was a kind of 'warp-and-weft' interaction.
Overlap zone
My first attempts to capture this, using fine-liner pen and charcoal, centred on an 'overlap zone' with interacting wavy and straight lines. Overlapping is a key action in creating a weave. One type of thread wraps around the other, and, in the basic 'plain' weave, these sites alternate line by line. Overlap occurs where sea meets foreshore in a dynamic area called a 'swash zone'. While, initially, I drew 'warp' and 'weft' lines vertically, showing their essential differences, I then began suggesting horizontal wave forms through arrangements of linear verticals. (This began, in reverse, with a drawing in which freely drawn curves were masked-off at one extremity to imply the presence of a straight line.)
Wave patterns
A documentary called 'The Secret Life of Waves' shifted my focus to wave patterns and the ways that energy moves through water, influenced by the push-and-pull of lunar gravitation. Push and pull are among the many contrasting dynamics that are embedded in the ancient, ubiquitous and cutting-edge technology of weaving. It's the resolution of contrasts within it that especially interests me (for more, see here), and it's worth noting that, after many years spent in research, my emphasis, for now, is on exploring related visual possibilities. I'm in the early stage of this enquiry, while continuing reading as a parallel activity. Visual notes and occasional writing help harness discoveries made along the way.
Strange attractor
Agility award
Probing polarities
In 2023, I had the opportunity to do a two-week residency in Athens. I've loved visiting Greece since my first trip as a teenager (for a report on an art retreat on Paros in 2022 see here) and have been building competency in the language. So it was a chance to combine research with these interests. I had devised a long-term project, called 'Strange Attractor', which draws on ideas from chaos theory to probe stylistic shifts in art history, beginning with the transition from Archaic to Classical sculpture in ancient Greece. Among many contrasts in style, this shows movement from strict verticals ('warp'), to incipient curves ('weft'). Availing of off-peak entry, I visited multiple museums, multiple times, making drawings to help me see better, and then working these up back in the studio.
An Arts Council Agility Award followed, funding a discrete project within this enquiry concerned with Archaic sculpture types: Kourai (female) and Kouroi (male). I initially spent time exploring their forms, which are frontal, vertical, symmetrical, stylised and schematised, among other attributes. I drew from observation, then 'blind', both to disrupt the certainty of their conception and to begin to imply the sense of movement that arose with Classicism, For similar reasons, I also folded and otherwise contoured them (for examples, see here). It was a chance to try out new materials and approaches, and I soon found myself importing line from the foreshore drawings, while - inspired by the use of colour in the ancient world - becoming more adventurous with this element across all my work.
Having committed to the concept of 'drawing as tapestry', what unified the work I exhibited was my interest in polar opposites as part of a whole; how they interact and what may lie between them. As the installation day approached, I made some horizontal drawings featuring two waves formed from vertical lines. Their titles allude to pairings such as 'day' and 'night', 'warm' and 'cool', and each features an overlap zone. Another series, called Torn Fabric, was a spontaneous response to the damage being done to the social fabric by current polarising politics. They are the beginnings of new work, which I now feel can travel beyond drawing to include other mixed-media approaches. This will explore more ways to allude to warp and weft, which continue to offer metaphoric potential.
SEE: 'Drawing as Tapestry' news post and exhibition artworks.
THIRD-PARTY TEXT: 'Drawing as Tapestry' by Lorraine Whelan.
