Hi there!
I am Holly, an Embroiderer and Illustrator from the North East England currently residing in Manchester.
From a young age when my grandmother taught me to sew, I have always had a passionate interest in embroidery. But it has only been in recent years that I started to take embroidery more seriously in my practice and have been developing skills within the technique ever since. I have also always loved graphic novels since childhood. For a while my practice focused more on textiles and embroidery, as embroidered works and sequential image are not often used together. In my last few projects, though, I have married together these techniques. I create embroidered banners, based mainly on an on-going narrative, of a dog called Solum, using sequential image as a component of the design, as well as a window for opening up the possibility to represent the passing of time or movements within stitch.
My themes are usually drawn from emotions and personal experiences, which I find evoke strongly emotive material, when translated into stitch. My intention is usually to take inspiration from my personal emotions and experiences and to create narratives relating them to an invented character, such as Solum. This allows my work to speak more empathetically to a wider audience. As the issues that I face day-to-day seem to be common among people in our society, I try to create work that is generalised enough, to work as pieces that act as a Zeitgeist of our current time. To gather information from my experiences and feelings for a narrative, I usually start my projects by using automatic writing. This allows me to open up my mind to areas of my thoughts I may have become detached from, which can happen when I am trying to recall an experience directly and then over-complicating my thoughts. I prefer to start writing without an emotion or experience in mind, and I find that this method almost always refers to an unexpected, interesting and specific feeling and experience upon reading my words back.
I am currently open to commissions and business opportunities and you can contact me via the email on the Contact section on this site.
You can find me regularly posting updates on Instagram. Link at bottom of site.
