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For some reason, like thousands before me, I am continually drawn to the drama of the human figure. Why are we repeatedly urged to create representations of ourselves? So many books and articles have been written on this subject but none has given any real solutions. Long reflection suggests that it is 'life', be it drawing, painting, sculpture or even textile. The movement of the body is at once sensuous, powerful and dynamic and, if an element of 'life' can be captured, one is hopefully moving forward.
Drawing, for me, is the 'limbering up' in art. It demands total commitment and is ignored at my peril. Drawing gives an understanding, knowledge and familiarity of the subject matter. An acceptable drawing usually produces a decent piece of work. It doesn't give an end result but does help to explore an idea. It goes rather against my temperament as I am rather impatient and like to jump in feet first. Drawing for at least one hour a day, every day, is my aim, either from a model or from photographs and occasionally from memory, which can be quite revealing.
Frustration is another tool that can be utilised. Often it is only when I am really stymied that the line is crossed, risks are taken and achievements made. Occasionally, this mark is overstepped, the piece is massacred and I am forced to start again. In fact quite often. This is why it is so difficult to comment when people ask 'how long does it take?'.
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I work from drawings, photographs and my own body, which is used for reference if a pose needs to be studied. I like to think there is a little part of me in each of my works. It is good to pull out the abstract shapes of the form that the light and dark produce and find that the body is constantly changing due to the shifting sense of light and shade. My work is often monochromatic with subtle tones. I am not a user of strong colour, partly due to being a migraine sufferer and not being able to tolerate vivid hues. People wearing scarlet sweaters are to be avoided.
Pattern plays a large role in my work; I feel it helps to hold the work together and acts rather like a scaffold structure. A patterned surface gives a sense of constructive purpose or design and often, too, of exuberance and vitality. The painter Patrick Heron wrote about the varying underlying shapes of every great painter: Velasquez - eggs and fishes, Picasso - flat triangles, Rubens - 'endless spheres', El Greco - solid diamonds and Bonnard - large scale fish nets pulling the surface of the canvas into loosely connected squares and lozenges. (He also wrote that he dislikes art with designs on you, art with messages, art as exhortation. I heartily agree.)
Artists have, for centuries, combined pattern and decoration with figurative art, whether it is in the form of a repetitive sequence of lines, shapes, tonal accents, colours or even brush marks. It helps to provide a sense of continuous visual harmony and order or, when combined with unpatterned areas, provide us with visual variety such as the contrast between the plain and patterned areas in the pictures by Matisse and Braque. Pattern-like texture helps to slow down the eye as it crosses the picture surface.
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Working with patterned fabric creates another layer of 'scaffolding' and hours are spent hunting down just the right weight and type of fabric, driving the sales assistants crazy when requesting ten different fabrics in the smallest available quantities so that I can experiment. Another layer of pattern is applied on this by free machining, often a fleur-de-lis design, and then a figure is worked through this and embellished with more stitching, paint and dyes.
One of the most difficult problems is when to stop. More pieces have been overworked than I care to remember. Working on several at one time is often the way round this, switching from one to another. Variety of size also helps, going from large to small and vice versa. I go through phases of heavy stitching. Some pieces are heavily stitched while others rely more on outline. Stitching is always from the back as I like the apprehension of turning over the work and finding odd things happening and the machined stitch looks better from the rear and does not disturb the surface as much. My aim is to try to keep the pieces reasonably loose and as fluid as possible, which can often result in cutting and collage taking over. Quite often the machine stitching is ripped out if IŻm not happy with it and using a stronger thread with a weaker one will help to do this. A great deal of metallic thread is used as these reflect the light and help to keep the work alive.
Like many other textile/embroidery artists, a frequently answered question is: why I don't paint my pieces and forget about stitching. Sometimes I ask myself the same question. But stitch, thread and fabrics give a freedom and unpredictability in my work that is hard to give up. For me, the richness that fabric and thread can give to a piece of work has never been equalled in painting.
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Introducing changes in my work is always in my mind, not drastically, but in a subtle way, not changing direction but building on it. It is so easy to get side-tracked. There are so many choices to be made and too many temptations. Only the other day, I was considering taking up tapestry.
This article is from The World of Embroidery, Volume 52 No.3, © Susan Macarthur.