February Zoom with Maria Wigley

In February BETA enjoyed an interesting and well illustrated ZOOM talk from Maria. She told us about her academic background and about early adventures in stitching, using fabric painted freely on, by her then 18 month old daughter. Maria responded to the marks on the fabric in stitch. (At least one recent grandmother in our group was thinking she might have a go at doing this). Maria used hand-stitch and included thoughts in her stitching. A beautiful Emily Dickinson quote ‘painting is silent poetry and poetry is painting that speaks’ is an inspiration for her work..

Over time Maria’s stitched writing became more like scribble and she became interested in asemic writing. This is script that does not include meaningful or legible words. She was also inspired by Chinese art, which she described as simplicity revealing the essence. Maria now blends landscape and story using asemic writing. She mostly uses machine stitching and often stitches on soluble fabric to create script that can be placed on top of backgrounds. Sheer fabric features a lot in her work so that layers can be seen and described herself as combining the purposeful – the stitch, with serendipity – the painting on which it sits. Her colour palette is shown in the beautiful samples above.

Maria shared a wide range of her beautiful work with us. She will be exhibiting at Mile End in London from 19th April. You can follow her on instagram and find more information on her website Maria.Wigley.co.uk. I for one would love the chance to see more of her work on line, but also in ‘real life’.

After the presentation Anne told us about a planned Westhope trip in September 15th to 17th and has sent a separate email with details. Members who haven’t been to Westhope before can see how lovely it is via that email. Numbers are limited so if interested members will have to commit soon and pay a deposit. The whole fee can then be paid in installments. The weekend led by Jane Hunter will include a day eco printing followed by a day stitching

The sit and stitch on the first Saturday each month in Northfield is a great success and is being extended by an hour from 11 am to 2 pm everyone is welcome.

As the meeting this month was a zoom meeting there was no raffle. The March meeting will be in person and features Edwina McKinnon, who will be talking about colour. The raffle bag is orange.