Textile Artist
Profile
I am both a textile artist and experienced English teacher who has taught ESOL in community-based settings since the late 1980s. These two paths have often intersected. I have successfully used textile crafts as an aid to teaching basic literacy to immigrant women at Community English School in Oxford, as well as in Family Learning programmes and collaborative textile projects for museums, community groups and vulnerable people in Oxford and beyond. In 2003 I won the Learning and Skills Council's national 'Most Imaginative Learning Resources" award for my work in community-based settings. I have taught textile courses for Oxfordshire Adult Learning and for Oxford Summer School.
Travels in India, Nepal, Turkey, Japan and Korea consolidated my interest in textiles, and especially in silk. I derive enormous pleasure from working with silk - both for its texture, its glow and wonderful depth of colour. I enjoy teaching silk painting workshops, and regularly show my work at Oxford Artweeks.
On retiring from formal English teaching I decided to undertake the City & Guilds 'Patchwork and Quilting' Certificate Course at Missenden Abbey. This led to the award of the C & G Medal for Excellence in 2014, and a year later to the Quilters' Guild's City & Guilds Bursary to develop my work further.
The bursary took me to Iran as a source of inspiration, and the resulting work was shown in an exhibition at the Festival of Quilts 2016. In
2017 I set out to explore another region evocative of the ancient Silk Road - Uzbekistan, where the age-old traditions of weaving, embroidery, printing, carpet making, wood carving and silk production are still very much alive. The inspiration derived from my travels along the Silk Road informs my current work, as well as the workshops and illustrated talks I enjoy giving to quilting groups and families in Central and S/E England.
Travels in India, Nepal, Turkey, Japan and Korea consolidated my interest in textiles, and especially in silk. I derive enormous pleasure from working with silk - both for its texture, its glow and wonderful depth of colour. I enjoy teaching silk painting workshops, and regularly show my work at Oxford Artweeks.
On retiring from formal English teaching I decided to undertake the City & Guilds 'Patchwork and Quilting' Certificate Course at Missenden Abbey. This led to the award of the C & G Medal for Excellence in 2014, and a year later to the Quilters' Guild's City & Guilds Bursary to develop my work further.
The bursary took me to Iran as a source of inspiration, and the resulting work was shown in an exhibition at the Festival of Quilts 2016. In
2017 I set out to explore another region evocative of the ancient Silk Road - Uzbekistan, where the age-old traditions of weaving, embroidery, printing, carpet making, wood carving and silk production are still very much alive. The inspiration derived from my travels along the Silk Road informs my current work, as well as the workshops and illustrated talks I enjoy giving to quilting groups and families in Central and S/E England.