Tessa Perlow is a fashion designer who immediately caught my attention with the individual and unique style of her art. The clothing is slightly unusual to other fashion I have seen and each piece looks almost like a canvas that has just been painted or embroidered on. My favourite parts of her work are when she includes the abstract faces done in line work which are stitched into the clothing. I love to draw in a similar way to this and so I really liked the artistic look of the fashion. This has inspired me to try and incorporate my style of drawing and painting into other medias. Tessa Perlow is a fiber artist based in Asbury Park, NJ, and she specialises in embroidery and repurposed garments. She is inspired by Nature and Magic, and uses embroidery techniques and beading to embellish clothing and embroidered illustrations. Her work of embroidery designs can be bought through her Etsy store. The main materials Tessa Perlow uses are pieces that combine acrylic paint with embroidery, and also some crotchet, as well as a large range of other materials and techniques. She also gets a lot of her art materials by re-purposing stuff she finds lying around the house, experimenting with magazines, clothes, string and many other things, which I found inspiring.
Nigel Cheney is an English textile designer who has lived and worked in Dublin, Ireland for over 20 years. I decided to research this artist because I like how he incorporates animals very often into his work, which I have a great interest in. His creative practice revolves around the act of drawing, painting and the production of stitched textiles that have an application for fashion, interiors, commission and gallery work. His background in textiles has led him to a fascination with colour, surface and mark making. His textile artworks range form monumental to small scale, but all express a love of narrative, imagery, surface and colour. Natural forms such as birds, flowers and animals are studied in great depth, while his paintings explore the contrast between loose gestural grounds and detailed imagery. He has a clear interest in a full palette of textile processes including digital printing, hand and machine embroidery in his work. his work also explores ambiguous territories where childlike phrases and idioms are often reinterpreted and juxtaposed to create new images. I think Cheney’s technique is fascinating and I love how the thread and other materials are used to create the hairs on the dog and rabbit giving them a more lifelike effect.
Jane V Shorten is a contemporary textile artist who creates whimsical scenes, where vintage line drawings sit in slightly surreal, offbeat landscapes, surrounded by colourful embroidered flora and fauna. Shorten states that she “developed a technique whereby I take a vintage black-lined image as the starting point for my textile art and then, using appliqué and embroidery stitches, place that very literal image in an environment that is slightly fantastical or abstract but usually based in nature.” This textile artist’s work attracted me as it portrays a colourful theme of nature and is very abstract. I also like how the vibrant and abstract parts are contrasted with the more detailed vintage black-lined images as I have never seen anything like this before. This textile artist’s work inspires me to experiment more with abstract work and stitching as I have not done too much of this in the past but I love seeing these techniques in people’s artwork.