Wendy Greaves

I find embroidery (both hand and machine) liberating. Stitch is immediate and intuitive. It allows me to mix colour by over painting. Within my landscapes, my materials are everything and anything. I love contrasting sumptuous velvets and matt wools with shimmering organza. I take immense pleasure in collecting and hoarding tiny fragments of fabrics, papers and beach debris that may one day represent a minute section of a large landscape. The surface of the fabric that I stitch onto becomes manipulated by the techniques that I employ, and the dramatic landscapes provide me with visual stimuli that I seek not to emulate, but to investigate.

Since moving to North Devon my style has changed as I feel that I understand the coast more intimately and have searched for a new direction to take my work into. This new collection reflects my love of the North Devon coast and the patterns, colours and textures that emerge through the large overhanging caverns, the differing seaweeds that are abundant in the murky rock pools and the debris that is dramatically tossed aside by the fierce Atlantic.