JANE COLQUHOUN. SWIMMING.

Embroidery,
Signed and dated 2021 verso.
19cm x 19cm, (35.5cm x 35.5cm x 4.6cm including frame).

Jane Colquhoun:

I work on embroideries from my home studio in Swanage Dorset. I work on canvas on images taken from phone snaps and sketchbook studies of people in public spaces- often related to the coast and seaside.
I am interested in how textile or folk artists through various ages and cultures, create motifs based on observations of everyday life. Nowadays observations of daily life are framed for us via our digital devices and I make use of my phone to record my daily noticings, either from the digital realm or from actual life.
The type of image I may ‘collect’ may be a snapshot based on a random pattern formation made by people at leisure in the landscape, perhaps noticing something in the rhythm of jumbled patterns and colours along a packed beach, people swimming or elsewhere figures spending leisure time in the built environment.
Cropping and manipulating digitally enhances a specific human motif or shape within the overall pattern. The instantaneous image is used to create a template that I will then develop slowly, painstakingly into small embroidery, drawing out the details of that one particular moment. As I sew, I notice with growing fascination the similarities and differences of size, shape, clothing, skin tones, distance and separateness between individuals.

I have a love/hate relationship with stitching-I started in childhood and I find it hard to work slowly, and it is a challenging but fascinating test of my ability to be more present with my creative practice. I find out a lot about myself and the people I observe working this way, but after such intense methodical work I will often need to break out and want to explore something more expressive and gestural using a more random and fluid media. (eg.watercolour, raku ceramics).