Celia Darbyshire is “Moving On”

“After I graduated, I knew I wanted to move away from the mixed media work I did for my degree show, and back to my first love, hand stitch. I played around with several ideas, but I had no clear sense of direction, and nothing really spoke to me. After 4 years of City and Guilds and 3 years of the degree, when I was working to deadlines, making pieces and using techniques more or less prescribed by the course, I didn’t know what I wanted to do.

I came across an on-line course, ‘An Embroiderer’s Ledger’ by Karen Ruane, and without really knowing what I was letting myself in for, I signed up for it. It was an eye opener.

Karen showed us how to move from an image which inspired us to our own individual work, through  drawing, painting, stitch and collage. In the process, which is great fun, you produce a ledger which is a thing of beauty in its own right, and an endless source of inspiration.

By this stage I was beginning to think about ‘Moving On’, our display at the NEC. I had been taking photos of traffic with the idea of using them in some way, but using Karen’s techniques on a manipulated photo of cars produced a motif of repeated arrowheads. This image had a definite sense of direction, but arrows can go in all directions, just like my ideas. I decided to make a book which reflected the journey from my mixed media work, through chaos, to some sort of resolution.  I chose a piece of clashing hand-dyed fabric for the backing and set to work, using colours found in the fabric.

Part way through, I was playing around with a photo of the mixed media page, ran it through an iPad app called Decim8 – and the arrows popped up again from nowhere. It was obviously meant to be!”

Celia Darbyshire’s “Moving On”