Artist Rhian Swierat uses paper in innovative ways to create her highly textured art. Paint, watercolor, graphite, colored pencils, ink, dye (even tea!), and copper foil is used on paper that she then embroiders using silk and poly threads.
Her Artist Statement is inspiring:
"My work is derived from the historical precedent of a sampler, using stitches to record the forms, patterns and textures of my experiences of different places. This recording of memories is a tactile sense of space, not a photographic documentation. All the forms, patterns, textures and colors are my impressions and understandings from a specific time and place.
Each piece becomes a conversation between me and the materials. What often starts in one direction will change as the layers build and affect each other. The patterns I use derive heavily from botanical and natural forms. Nothing is solid, static or whole. Like memories the forms shift, fragment, intertwine and evolve.
My process takes precedent over any drive towards a preordained composition. Sewing has no short cuts, you need to make every stitch to fill a space. This process becomes meditative as I work to recall each memory and distill it into a physical representation. A by-product of my process and material choice is that each move can not be erased. It can be picked out or covered over but the holes and ghosts of the idea remain as pentimenti of my process, becoming a layered memory fading to the background."
Here is her engaging piece
A Hiding Place (silk and polyester thread, sequins, ink and watercolor on paper) with two pictures of details.
This one is called
Eye Candy (rayon, crewel, polyester and silk thread, colored pencil, ink and photo-sensitive ink on paper). I particularly like the details on this one...like little doodles, but in thread!
And finally, here is an image that looks delicious:
To Have And To Hold, with details.
https://www.rhianswierat.com/
