Paint & thread…ideas that travel…
In the midst of making work, it can often feel like I’m just knocking about, trying to pull everything together into a (somewhat coherent) whole.
But now that my exhibition Sun Path is over, I can look back and see it again, differently. I can see the terrain I covered and where I ended up…and can start to figure out which ideas have had their time, and which ones still have energy to travel.
I can start to see what (I think) will give me something to play with going forward.
Sun Path - Five Walls Project Spaces, 2026
Paint and thread: the repetitive mark
At the centre of it all is this connection that’s being created between my paintings and textile works, played out through a renewed focus on mark-making.
For me, this mark-making has ENERGY. It has legs, it is going somewhere: a mark on a mission.
It is an inherent part of the nature of stitching; and now I find that this repetitive action of driving thread through fabric has carried across into the way I apply paint and create colour.
There is a kind of mimicry happening here, where I feel like I’m asking myself: how can paint be made to echo the dense, textured surface of the thread works?
The answer that has come back is in those brushstrokes; the tiny marks of paint; a direct echo of the gesture of the stitch.
Mark-making is not a new thing in my practice - I wrote about this last year as it was starting to resurface in the work.
This repetitive, meditative making of the mark first made an appearance in my practice so long ago I don’t even have digital documentation of these early works (I do have SLIDES…remember them? Yep, I’m that old…)
It resurfaced again in my text-art period, then again in my ink drawings, and now it is making a comeback through the paint and threads.
In some senses, the paintings are a bit like rehearsals for the textile works: a (slightly quicker) way of practicing and testing out how to go about building the colours, patterns and forms through this mark. But they are not only that. There is more to work out here, in terms of what this painted mark is.
In terms of the stitch, I also feel like I’m still exploring how I can work with these threads. I don’t feel I’ve harnessed the full capabilities of the stitch (or how I want to use those capabilities), or perhaps I am yet to make them mine, to fully internalise the stitch.
So what to do next…?
More marks, more paints, more threads.
Paint and thread: contained in the frame
Another connection runs the other way, from the painting back through to the textiles; in the sense that I am still considering ALL the works as if they were paintings.
The paintings begin on rigid wood panels, so their truth starts and ends as a rectangle.
The textiles, though, begin as pliable, foldable, malleable, pierceable planes which only take on the rectangular form when they are finished, stretched and framed.
This method of finishing contains them within this conventional painting format of the flat rectangle, literally boxing them up, and echoing the structure of the paintings.
So, at the moment, this painting-based, wall-work convention keeps both the textiles and the paintings on that same flat plane, in the same format, where they can be read in similar ways.
I don’t even know how I might want to challenge this yet, or how to begin, but I know that it is there is a question there.
Do I want my planes more pliable?
Or…do I want the frame to be doing MORE?
The question (I’m thinking) is not: “to frame, or not to frame’, but HOW to frame?
Do I know what it all means now…?
Ah…well…perhaps not.
But I know a bit more about what is INTERESTING (to me, and hopefully to you) …and maybe, maybe; what can be pushed further…
Watch this space…
