Penny Leaver Green
Collage artist
Bristol, United Kingdom
Seasonal echoes in layered silk
- Penny uses silk to explore the human emotional relationship with nature
- Her process of cutting and layering fabric into compositions is self-taught
- Her work draws on Japanese seasonal colour traditions
Before building a textile practice, Penny Leaver Green worked on interior design projects and taught English and drama in Westminster. She was introduced to Japan and its cultural sensibilities accompanying a student exchange to Tokyo. Penny began making textile work in the early 2000s. One of her quilts, featuring declining British bird species, was exhibited at the Röhsska Museum in Gothenburg, Sweden. Her current work involves Japanese kimono silk, its palette drawn from seasonal dress customs. "From my garden studio, my memories of places are composed without drawing on silk grounds. I cut directly into the material, building compositions organically," she explains. Penny exhibits her creations internationally and works on private and public commissions.
INTERVIEW
I am very English, but I have been to Japan many times since the early 2000s, so what I make is an outsider's response to a place and its reflected culture. My work is not trying to be Japanese. I am interested in the interface between inspiration and practice: where does something you have seen end and something you have made begin?
I do not decide on anything before I start working, nor do I plan or draw ahead. I can look at a piece of silk, see a swirl and think: this reminds me of a tree I have seen. If I were to sit down and choose to create a tree, it would lack life. The pieces that work are the ones where I have followed something in the fabric.
My most recent series, 12 bonsai studies for each month of the year, has drawn me back to hand stitching. I used to make friezes of children's stories. There was something about pure stitching that I always loved. But it is a nightmare on my fingers, so I have leather thimbles to avoid bleeding on the work!
I usually work alone, with BBC Radio 4 in the background, so I rarely get to explain the work, but I facilitate workshops at the Holburne Museum in Bath for their Pathways to Wellbeing programme. I try to give people the conditions to find something themselves, through creativity and memory: a focus on the process and finding the flow. It is the same ethos I apply in my own work.
Penny Leaver Green
Collage artist
Bristol, United Kingdom
ADDRESS
Address upon request, Bristol, United Kingdom
AVAILABILITY
By appointment only
LANGUAGES
English
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