Christine Sawyer – V is for Verve

I have been weaving tapestries since the mid nineteen eighties, and the process still enthralls me. With each piece I make, I try to do something I have never tackled before. It’s a testimony to the wonderful capacity of the medium that there is always so much more to learn. As soon as I read the title of this proposed exhibition, I knew I wanted to make something colourful, and hopefully, humorous. I keep a daybook in which I write notes and scribble first ideas. I used coloured ink pens for this group.

Originally the ‘legs’ were intended to be yellow shading up to green, but having observed a working bee with legs coated in fat hoops of pollen, I decided to add more substance, with tufting, which
I have always enjoyed. Maybe the final image has a hint of hybrid animal / robot. The tapestry is shaped as in the drawing, and mounted on black wool serge.
It was woven at 10 ends per inch on a cotton warp, the weft is cotton, linen, wool and some rayon.