‘Telling Stories’ can be seen at the beautiful Weavers Gallery, Ledbury, 3rd-9th June 2019

Following her successful 2018 exhibition at the Weavers Gallery Deborah Collum returns to Ledbury in June 2019 with a new collection of textile work: ‘Telling Stories’.

Colour and texture are celebrated again with variety of materials and techniques. Collages of fabrics have been hand-dyed, painted or printed, before being over-sewing with a riot of stitch and other embellishments such as beads, buttons and foils.

Telling Stories includes new landscapes based on the much-loved views around her Warwickshire home, describing the changing tapestry of the rural calendar.

Other works are more abstract, compositions of fabrics and stitch, colours and textures with the imperfections of the media – frayed edges and hanging threads – adding to the richness of the whole.

A new departure is a series of works depicting well known characters from literature ‘Shakespeare, of course’ Deborah says, ‘Living in Stratford-upon-Avon it becomes part of your DNA, but also Charles Dickens, fairy tales and myths and legends. Trying to portray personality through textile art has been an exciting challenge’.

By incorporating vintage fabric as well as the simply old and forgotten, each fragment with its secret history, Deborah hopes her work pays tribute to all the generations of women throughout history who darned, knitted and stitched to keep their families warm and their homes beautiful. ‘I hope that in a small way I’m continuing that noble and undervalued tradition. Each piece of my work is an act of love and each tells its own story’.