Featured Artist Lynette Williams

Artsy Shark is pleased to present the collage portfolio of Lynette Williams. See more of this talented artist’s work by visiting her website.

I am an emerging artist using fabric collage as my medium. I have been surrounded by textiles all of my life.  My mother taught me to sew at a very young age. Throughout my life I have used many means of expressing myself creatively, including weaving, marquetry, sewing of all kinds and even a bit of pottery.  My love for the textures, patterns and  variation of colors in fabrics made it inevitable that I would use fabrics in my art at some point.  It grew out of appliqué; a technique of layering fabrics to achieve a unique pattern or picture, which is common in quilting.  Fabric Collage multiplies that process exponentially. Seeing an image blossom from “collaging” tiny bits of fabric is an adventure on each new piece I do.

I very seldom color my own fabric because I love to hunt for fabric to represent a particular color of hair or the perfect shade of pink for a sky. Often I use the “back” side of the fabric to get the look I want. I get a particular delight in using fabric for quite a different purpose than the designer may have intended.  It’s a sort of secret and unwitting collaboration with the designer. Most pieces have individual cuts of fabric numbering in the thousands.  I work mostly in the representational style with some experimentation in expressionism.

The biggest challenge for me right now is juggling my sewing business with my desire to spend more time in the studio. I am limited to stealing spare moments to do fabric collage – not yet able to quit my day job.  My goal is to be a full time artist; to make art that gives the viewer something they have not seen before, to give them something worthwhile – stimulating them to think about the subject in a new way.   I want those viewing my art to experience something of the pleasure that I had in creating each piece.  Through this process I want to be able to explore all of the possibilities that fabric has to offer as an art medium.

I am presently doing some commissioned portrait work, but am concurrently developing a series of images involving water.  I have been pondering the dichotomy that exists in relation to water.  Water is essential to our lives;   necessary for survival and yet it has an aesthetic quality that awes, inspires and even at times terrifies us.  It preserves life but can also take life. It has a unique place in each of the various cultures of the world and in some cases its absence creates severe hardship. There are so many uses and forms of the substance that I don’t think I would ever run out of material to experiment with.  I am especially attracted to images that use reflective surfaces to interact with light.  Water is a great subject for that. I am in the process of developing 10 to 12 works for a show around this theme.

My inspiration comes from my insatiable appetite to make things.  A condition I have had for most of my life and for which there is no cure.  I am always looking for things to re-purpose for the sheer pleasure of seeing what can be out of what is.  Nature is also a huge inspiration for me.  In it there are endless beauties and wonders to explore.  I am also inspired by my medium – fabric.  “In The Garden” was inspired by a sheer print blouse I found in a second-hand shop. I immediately took it home and began to style it into this piece. My vision was of abstract flowers, but then, combining it with other sheer fabrics, a person emerged as well. The figure blends with and ultimately becomes part of the garden.  It portrays a person for whom gardens are a mainstay of life.  We all know someone like that.  The added bonus of the fabric being a sheer print gives the piece an ethereal element.