Alison Carpenter-Hughes is an award winning British mixed-media artist, focusing on free motion embroidery as an art form, exploring the sewing machine as a tool for ‘drawing’ or ‘painting.’ She lives and works in Leicester, exhibiting and selling artwork internationally, which has included work at the Saatchi Gallery. As well as working on private and public commissions, she has also participated in artist residencies in the UK and Japan.
Her practice is a process-driven exploration of material, often using items not associated with sewing. She works with different mediums and techniques, including textiles, painting, drawing and photography.
Finding inspiration in a range of different subject matter, such as stories; colour; a line of a song or the feel of a piece of music; creatures shaped by shadow that appear suddenly in commonplace objects; daydreams; an instance of thought, place and time; her work is characterised by capturing a moment that will pass away; a moment that reveals an intimacy and vulnerability. Exploring everyday experiences and symbolism, she seeks to create a personal connection to her imagination through visual storytelling, but to also leave the narrative open for the viewer.
Often working with sewn full size and partial figures, Alison leaves loose hanging threads that make them seem as though they are drifting-off into a dreamlike state, highlighting the passing of time. The work exists in that hazy place between consciousness and sub-consciousness; dreams and reality. There is a certain ambiguity to her work as each piece reveals only a fragment of their subject; the loose strands adding to their sense of incompletion, imperfection and impermanence. Indeed, machine embroidery itself is an art form that dwells somewhere betwixt two and three-dimensional states, a breach of one sphere to another, creating a tactile sensuousness.
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