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During a course on dress and design, I was introduced
to the art of batik and fell in love with it. This was in the
middle seventies and the love has grown with the years.
Buying household candles, Dylon dyes and utilising
old sheets and battered pans, I embarked on my favourite art
form which is now in its third decade.
Living in the Highlands, I now have a small gallery
which I run with my husband. We sell a lot of art and crafts
but the accent is on batik work. My husband Bill is a picture
framer in his spare time and without his help I couldn’t
be producing and selling the work I do. With our first lot of
profits we invested in a Vacuum Hot Press and it is one of the
best things we ever did. It enables the mounting of my pictures
onto a firm, acid free backing, and does away with labour intensive
stretching and horrific bubbles.
Having developed my own style for the first twenty
years and taking my inspiration from the patterns and hues of
the surrounding landscape and that of the Mediterranean, I gradually
became aware that I was not alone. During some excellent workshops
with Anne Dye at the Ariundle Centre, I met some fellow batikers
and learned about the Batik Guild. Not only have I now learnt
so much more about the craft but I have made some dear friends.
I have been involved with quite a few workshops
in local primary schools and will have had two adult workshops
in 2007. The delight on the faces of those who have produced
a batik for the first time is so rewarding, whether they are
adults, children, veteran artists or novices - because they remind
me of how I felt the first time.
If I was asked why I love batik I would say it
is an art form with attitude. That is because no matter how much
you plan your work or how you envisage it will turn out, sometimes
in a small way or sometimes large, it always turns out the way
it wants to. Apart from the element of surprise, I feel this
gives my work a looseness it would not otherwise have had using
another medium.
I enjoy submitting my work to various exhibitions
and am so pleased when it appears beside the more traditional
art forms. Many times I find people in the gallery looking at
my work and asking where the Batiks are, they are usually intrigued
and want me to explain or demonstrate the method. I hope to carry
on developing and experimenting and most of all enjoying this
lovely medium for many years to come.
Thank to our gallery I now have work in private
collections in America, Spain and France as well as the UK. I
am thrilled because this is the second year that I have had work
accepted in the Patchings exhibition in Nottingham in June, a
competition sponsored by ‘ The Artist’ and ’Leisure
Painter’ magazines.
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