Alliteration

April 2022

The Covid lockdowns of 2020 and 2021 were, for me, a time of profound isolation and intense creative development. As I worked away on textile pieces on the theme of “Earthworks”, and all the connotations that word implies, I found myself drawn more and more to the incidental and repeat marks that I found in the cloth, much of which had been boiled up on the bonfire or buried in the peat. There were so many variations and rhythms of marks such as a circles and lines that I felt myself drifting away from making representational images of the natural world and drawn towards celebrating the patterns and shapes that are common to all life forms.

Some of these shapes are almost calligraphy and call to mind the ancient Celtic language of Ogham, or Nordic runic inscriptions, or the symbols that are found in pre-historic art. The term “alliteration” is often used to describe a series of words that have a similar starting sound, eg she sells sea shells, but a different ending from each other. I find great joy in the fact that, in nature, once one looks beyond the obvious repetition, there is an enormous variation in form to be found. This gallery represents my first steps in making work in this direction.

This image is also available in Card Format.