Finola

Artist Statement

Julie creates drawings and paintings with machine thread, mostly onto furnishing fabrics and mainly using animals as inspiration, often using childhood memories as a starting point. She is inspired by a love of textures and layers and, although this can be achieved with paint, believes that stitched art can really encourage the viewer to speculate on how the work was achieved. The speed and capricious nature of the sewing machine, when used in this unconventional way, reflects characteristics of her subjects.  Threads are purposely left loose over or around the image to allow the illusion of more depth and movement. 

Through careful observation and drawing studies, she loves to give her animals a ‘stare’, almost anthropomorphic qualities, which invites her audience to recall their own memories or relationship which they have formed with animals, domestic or wild and also to hopefully encourage them to perceive the characters of the animals they encounter.

The name Finola comes from an old Irish folktale about a Kings children being changed into swans by his new wife. Julie made this piece using off cuts of wedding dress lace fabric. Free motion stitch emboss banana fibres to create the smooth textures of the neck feathers in comparison to loose threads, layered lace and couched lengths of raffia that form an overlapping structure of the swans wings. Threads are left loose to dangle down towards the surface of the water.