helen crawford

birches in winter

I discovered the exciting world of textiles while teacher training at Avery Hill College. Later, I completed City and Guilds Embroidery, Parts 1 and 2 at Malvern Hills College.

approaching storm

In June, 2003, I graduated with an HNC in Stitched Textiles from Gloucester College of Art and Technology, where experiments with new media led to a collection of coastal landscape images in silk paper, where composition and content are integrated during the process of construction. Visits to the Hebrides continue to inspire further explorations of this theme in my work.

autumn birches

In 2005 an opportunity to exhibit with the Embroiderers’ Guild at The Nature in Art Museum, near Gloucester, led to the first of a series of textile and paper works based on drawings highlighting the effects of the seasons on birch trees in a diversity of habitats. Working on a series gives me the opportunity to investigate the details as well as the wider view. Images become more abstract and elemental.

hebridean shore

I have always lived in the countryside and the natural environment of favourite landscapes inspire all my textile and mixed media works: trees and streams around my home at the foot of the Malvern Hills, the wild coasts of Scotland and the effects of atmospheric light and seasonal changes upon these special places. It is important that the particular quality that excites my interest is incorporated into the final work: interlacing rivulets of tidal waters on flat sand..... fragmented colours of sunlit water..... bold contrasting patterns of birch bark..... the delicate tracery of bare branches against a winter sky.

birches and grasses

I dye a variety of silk fibres to use as a palette to create silk paper, which becomes the support for added textile and mixed media techniques, including machine embroidery and collage. I also enjoy the exciting process of painting with watercolour and mixed media. Creating work in one medium leads to the development of new ideas and approaches to work in other media.

autumn colours

I show my work in group exhibitions, galleries and open studio events including Herefordshire Arts Week and the Forest Open Studios Art Trail. I am a qualified teacher and offer silk paper making workshops, talks and artist residencies