Pendragan Art Studio

After last year, one of the best of my life, it might have been sensible to continue embroidering vegetables. But we are not always as sensible as we should be. My interest in plant forms drew me to those that grow under the ocean, and I set out to make a series of sea gardens.

In studying the infinitely wondrous variety of algae, corals and anemones, I couldn’t help noticing the larger creatures that live among them. I wanted to learn more about them, and in the end they became the focus of a series of marine life portraits.

Portraiture hopes to reveal something about the subject.  The telling moment in time, the story in the context, the choices of what’s shown and what’s hidden, communicate at least as much as the expression on a face. 

The underwater world gleams with such narrative glimpses.  

In addition to my green turtle, I have completed some sea stars and an octopus. The cloth is cut from the same piece as the turtle picture, but because the fabric has a subtle lustre, the blue shade changes in the light. The sea glass on the bottom is fixed using shisha stitch, from mirror work. It was collected from the Roseland Peninsula in Cornwall in the late 1970s, and represents hours of companionable beachcombing with my family.

I am now stitching like a maniac to finish the final piece, a chambered nautilus. Watch this space.