Vickie Newington is a contemporary fibre artist who has graduated from the very intense City and Guilds of London Design and Embroidery course. Travelling to other countries made Vickie realize how much she enjoys architecture, especially the crumbling, deteriorating kind. Mother Nature and man-made structures inspire much of her work. Colour is exceedingly important, but she finds she is working more with lines, form and texture. New pieces are inspired by the colours of a leaf, the texture of a rusty piece of iron, or the lines of an old sidewalk with leaves fallen on it. |
Vickie Newington Artist Statement:
Working with textiles has been a lifelong pleasure for me. I have a passion for trying new techniques and concoctions that can be adapted for my use as a fibre artist. I am fascinated by the richness of layering – the way an image appears and disappears underneath another image that is partially visible - that allows the audience to make up their own stories about what the images are or what has happened to them. I approach fibre design in a painterly fashion, being aware of contrasts, leading the viewer's eye around, and using other 'guidelines' of painting.
I celebrate the beauty of Mother Nature and architecture by playing with texture, dimension, and colour. I like to hint at the picturesque history of a structure by using dark colours and ghostly edges that decay and disintegrate. The texture is visual, perceived through pattern and lines stamped, stenciled, or painted on the cloth, and literal with the application of puffy paints, wire, or layers of fibre stuffed to achieve high relief. The colours I use most are complex and subdued allowing the viewer a quiet spot to reflect and think.
Fabric is tactile – it is warm, versatile, and very flexible. Depending on the final look I'm after, I can create a look that is hard and shiny, fuzzy and squishy, or crumbling due to age. Sometimes leaving the edges raw and unfinished makes my work livelier, more spontaneous, with threads at the edges dangling off the piece.
After quickly sketching out some ideas, I design the image full-size to use as a pattern. Choosing appropriate fabrics, be they smooth or nubbly, shiny or matte, I then apply a 'basecoat' of colour. When this layer has dried, I stamp, stencil, or silkscreen to give me an all-important texture, and then the real fun starts with embellishment – beading, stitching by hand or machine, applying other fabrics, or a myriad of other possibilities.
The sizes of my pieces vary from miniatures to very large works that need a wall behind for support. They are sold in galleries and through commissioned orders.
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