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Exhibitions

Fabricating Nature...

Fab­ri­cat­ing Nature… Wear­able Art and More fea­turi­jg works of Rose Elliott

Dates
19/02/22 – 12/03/22
Organisation
Region
Torbay
Opening Times
Sun–Mon, Closed
Tue–Sat, 11:00 – 17:00
Price
free admission
Rose is a textile designer and artist who has always tried to combine printed fabrics with unique paintings. She uses disperse dyes to paint on paper and then sublimate them onto fabric using a heat press - the result is a one-off full colour painting on fabric. Unique, malleable, colourfast and durable.

Her subject matter often comes from the natural world. The sheen achieved working on satins accentuates the surface of shells and fish, petals, wings and even a frog’s skin. Rose loves to grow plants and has a pond too, images of which she uses as reference - eg.the 'Oriental Poppies',' The Frog', 'The Tank', 'AKA Fish', 'Clematis' and so on.

The watercolours in this show: Petalscape Pink and Petalscape Blue 2 are an exploration of some of these images, using a much larger scale and focussing in on detail, using paint much as she uses the dyes, working on wet paper to form hard edges which merge into soft highlights and deep shadows. There is also a series of more abstract images on fabric using sprays and cut out images looking at how that medium can be stretched: 'Gulls on Black Waves', 'Zig-Zag', 'Sea Haze' etc.

Rose’s portfolio gives insight into previous work from when she lived in London, with a studio for many years in Camden Lock. There she designed garments, footwear, ties and more, often hand painted and handprinted - ‘Wearable Art’. It’s a theme she has returned to in the last couple of years. The pandemic inspired the making of masks, working with colleague Kristina Coles - see ‘Mask Story So Far’ and the two ‘Mask Collages’. The size limitation allowed her to paint mini paintings - plus they are useful which she loves - ‘Wearable Art’.

The ‘Seascape’. ‘Poppy’ and ‘Koi’ silk tops evolved after experimenting painting wet silk direct - again using her photographs as reference.’ The process is quite liberating but scary as each brush stroke is immediately permanent, but the result is more ‘Wearable Art’.’
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CREDIT
Disciplines
Textiles