Acheivements:    

• City and Guilds Embroidery Parts 1 and 2 1994 and 1996, South Trafford Collage.
• City and Guilds 7307Adult Education Teaching Certificate 1997.
• Macclesfield College B.Tec Art Foundation Macclesfield College - distinction June 1998.
• Part time adult education classes in art, embroidery and textile art.
• Commisioned art work.
• Selected to exhibit a Christmas tree ornament on the Queen's Christmas tree, Buckingham Palace England, Christmas 1998, subsequently auctioned by 'Phillips' for charity.
• Exhibited work and currently exhibiting in galleries nationwide, in Britain and the U.S.A.
• Part of a mixed media group of artists from the North of England, called 'Moving Clay and Friends'.
• Finalist in the Charles Henry Foyle Trust Award for Stitched Textiles 2000. 

Personal Statement:

I am an English Artist working in Multi-media Textiles. I make original, framed and unframed embroidered pieces and limited editions of prints suitable for hanging on walls in a variety of places. I chose textiles to work with because of a family background in the woolen industry of West Yorkshire.I had an aunt who was a textile designer and a grandmother who taught embroidery and tailoring.School holidays spent making things are a treasured memory.

 I now work from my studio in Macclesfield, Cheshire. My pieces are both delicate and strong with images drawn from many different sources of inspiration. I start with a theme or an idea and it can often be something quite small. I can be inspired by different cultures, the landscape, found objects or natural forms, in fact anything which catches my imagination. The work that I do is the end product of a process of generating ideas, trying them out, and accepting or rejecting them as appropriate. It involves developing the ideas in a number of ways before I reach a final piece.

I begin by working in a sketchbook, drawing an idea from all angles and thinking generally and visually. This stage includes everything or anything. Then it becomes necessary to select ideas which can be developed further, there may be several, and these are drawn out onto a design sheet, sometimes scaling up the original thought, sometimes taking it further with a series of small related drawings, or other graphic techniques. The purpose of this is to make the ideas become clearer and to develop my hunches. I find collage is often helpful at this stage as an intermediate link between drawing and textile pieces.

In making up the finished piece I would assemble my materials, collage them together and use machine stitching to draw with. Often I will finish my piece off with found objects and hand stitching. The final method of presentation will often occur to me during the making up stage but will take into account the situation for hanging. I do not always think it appropriate to frame pieces and some of my pieces are 3D and functional. Although this is not always possible, I would like people to feel able to touch my work and not have to look behind glass, as above everything else I see Textiles as a tactile medium.

E-mail me at: awtextiles@aol.com