When flying I have always been fascinated by the aerial view of the landscape. It can be the first view of a new country or the last you see of somewhere that has stolen your heart. So often an emotional experience, I remember the excitement or the sadness that view creates.

I think it’s so interesting to see the landscape from that perspective. It’s broken down into shape, pattern, colour and my favourite…texture! Also a completely different colour palette to the UK so often new and beautiful colour combinations to get excited about. Over the years I have been fortunate to take trips in helicopters, sea planes and a hot air balloon. Often on the coast, sometimes over forests and woodlands and have never used these ideas for my embroideries until now.

For some of the pieces my process has remained the same, I paint my composition on silk and stitch the detail on top. Others have seen me experiment using black silk as my base. I am creating more texture than before, using a range of weights in my threads. Aurifil cotton in 28, 40 and my usual 50 weight helps me do this.

I have now become hooked on this imagery! It forms part of a new body of work for a forthcoming exhibition called Textures in the Wild, for March 2022, it will be launched at the Willow Gallery, Oswestry

Textures in the Wild is a collaboration with Jaci Hogan, a successful pastel artist who has recently turned her attention to wild animal portraits. Using a combination of pan pastels, soft pastel sticks and pastel pencils she achieves life like and tactile studies of some of the world’s most majestic wildlife. Check out her work on Instagram @animal.artistuk
This collaboration started as a conversation about each other’s techniques and processes which sparked the idea to create to create a body of work together which would celebrate the beauty we both find in the varying range of textures within the natural world.
During the planning we have encouraged and inspired each other to step out of our comfort zones and explore new ways of working.