Robin Laws Field: ‘Scintillating Juxtaposition’

The words Robin Laws Field uses to describe her textured fibre art are as fascinating as her work:

Colour and texture pull me in and keep me up at night until I’ve figured out how to make them mine; and then how to picture them so that others can see what I see, be it beautiful, political, sentimental, funny or just a scintillating juxtaposition of bits and pieces that somehow please.

Above: “Pavements: Valetta, Malta” (2009) Nuno-felted silk and wool with hand-stitching and bead

Field’s “exquisite little bits of abstract,” as she calls them, are shown in Surfaces: The Photos & The Stories, an exhibition at Toronto’s Wellington Street Art Gallery March 20 to 31    

Here is her description of how a failed attempt at painting led to her current obsession with texture.

After several feeble attempts at abstraction in paint I began looking for abstraction around me.  I became fascinated by the colour and texture I saw in surfaces.  Floors, pavements, walls, fences, rusting freight cars, tree trunks, doors, shutters, footprints in the sand all got a second look.  Exquisite little bits of abstract art surrounded me crying out to be photographed and taken into the studio for a mixed-media (but mostly threaded needle) interpretation.

Above: “Walls: Fulford Harbour: Salt Spring Island, BC”  (2011) Needlepoint, tapestry, knitting, cotton, and yarn

Inspired by her travels in exotic places like India, Italy, Spain and Turkey, she transforms photographic representations into textured abstract wall works with an array of innovative fibre techniques and mixed media applications. Robin Laws Field studied fibre arts at St. Lawrence College in Kingston, Ontario.