On art as yoga

What different forms of art offer us and why drawing can be a run around the park

Chatting to artist friend

Rachel Welford

recently, I talked about how my textiles work is so emotive and deals with strong personal emotions, whereas I feel my painting is more free and light. Rachel asked why.

Big question. Huge.

I was talking about being pulled in different directions in my art - working in different media; and wanting to bring all of my emotional self to the work while at the same time wanting it to be light and enjoyable to make. I’m not sure these things are mutually exclusive and, on reflection, I guess it’s a continuum that I - all artists? - continually move along.

However, there is definitely a sense in which working in textiles brings out the emotions. My textiles journey has been hugely emotional (I notice I am using the past tense here - my degree ends in a few months. What will my relationship with textiles be after that?) and, talking to Rachel, I was trying to work out how far it’s the medium and how far it was coincidental timing - starting the degree in the middle of great upheaval in my personal life after the death of my husband and in the later, tortuous stages of a second abusive relationship.

Partly it’s the medium. Cloth is tender and personal; we wrap ourselves in it from birth and when we sleep and when we die. It is tactile in a way paint can never be. It is both strong and soft, resilient and fragile, beautiful and utilitarian. It belongs in our everyday lives and on the walls of white galleries. Cloth has offered me a language for every emotion I wanted to express, as I’ve written here before. And, mostly, working with cloth is slower; at least, slower than working with paint and paper. Weaving, stitching, dyeing all take time and all engage the senses through the fingertips and hands and arms, so that you are present in a way that allows the mind to sift through its load of thoughts. It feels to me like yoga, without the leggings; you move in order to be still; you make in order to unmake your thoughts or unpick them, at least.

Working on paper, especially drawing with a lovely soft stick of charcoal or swiping on thick palette-knife loads of paint - this is faster, more intuitive. Very freeing to someone whose creativity was largely learned through the painstaking processes of patchwork, knitting and embroidery. The marks come thick and fast and you can cover them up, layer them, colour them with great ease. That doesn’t mean it’s an easy medium. It is incredibly hard in paint, as in cloth, to express exactly what you want to say or capture the moment you want to capture.

Yet the timing was also crucial. As the intensity of my life grew unbearable, I was increasingly frustrated by the limitations of the craft work I was using to de-stress and cling onto some sense of self and stillness. I would sit with my patchwork or embroidery willing my mind to calm and the old sense of comfort to return. But I felt I needed more - more challenge, more excitement, more me - and that’s what the degree has offered. Maybe it would have been the same had I chosen a graphics degree or photography degree, both of which I considered. But textiles felt more familiar so that’s what I chose.

Recently, I’ve largely used drawing and painting as play and exploration, to ease the intensity of the textiles and to bring in new elements. There have been exceptions, though. The few paintings I have put out to exhibition so far were all deeply personal, intense and emotive; and they seem to have resonated with others because of that.

‘I don’t have to listen to you any more’. acrylic and mixed media on board, 30 cm x 30 cm

So to begin to answer Rachel’s question properly - why is my textiles work emotive when my painting feels like fun - well, I’ve kept it that way. It has been helpful - essential - to have a light and playful exploration of drawing and paint alongside the sometimes draining and always intense process of making the textile art I have been engaged in over the last few years. Cloth has always felt deeply familiar to me but paint was new. Even drawing - in the way I do now, expressively, freely, abstractly - was new; there were no rules and no one was watching.

‘Red’ acrylics and mixed media on board, 30 cm x 30 cm

Going forward, this will change. I know it will. Drawing and painting can do anything I ask them to and I can bring the creative and visual understanding that textiles has given me into all of my practice. I’m excited to see what this looks like. How it feels. If anyone else is interested.

But I will also be careful to keep something low risk and fun on the go. Sketchbooks. Making gift cards with my daughter. Doodling. The equivalent of a child’s run round in the park and pushing themself up into the sky on a swing. Letting off steam. In essence, playing: so essential for balance and for joy. I feel so lucky to have discovered the world of visual art which offers me all of these things.