A Glossary of Stitches (tethering and wrapping)

My temporary studio in the dining room. My main studio is too damp and cold at the moment.

These drawings I have made in the last two weeks, mainly in the temporary studio. I had a dip in my work after Christmas and found it really hard to reconnect with the work but this last week has been more fruitful thanks in part to a visit to my friends in Brecon who made some pertinent comments about my drawings which helped me find a way forward. This all coincided with the devastating news that the Conservative Government are revisiting the idea of a new airport on land very close to where Estuary Dialogues is partly situated. (please see earlier blog for more details about this).

I have begun to add some embroidered sections to the drawings as a new layer of surface and texture. In preparation for this I looked at a book on embroidery with a glossary of stitches. I chose a very simple cross stitch in the shape of an 'x'. I have always loved this symbol, since I first discovered the work of Tapies. I did not want to get too fixated on it though so I have also tried to do abstract marks by piercing holes randomly in the paper and letting the thread move about these piercings without any preconceived ideas.

Since beginning these new stitched marks, I have been thinking about using rope in some way to make a drawing on a large scale. Living on a boat for eight years, I became fascinated with old canvases, sail cloths and ropes. I am attracted to the tactile nature of these materials and their investment in the functional nature of their purpose. Ropes are so integral to boats, to tethering and wrapping, that I find them to be almost sacred objects.
A recent visit to Tate Britain to see a retrospective of the work of Barry Flanagan began a reintroduction to this humble material.
To quote from the accompanying leaflet on Barry Flanagan; Early Works 1965 -82

Flanagan continued to challenge traditional ideas about sculpture, employing unexpected materials such as hessian and rope. ...... He explored his own response to materials, which he considered the fundamental constituent of sculpture. A length of rope marking space within or between rooms could also be understood as a drawn line.