The Tiny Tea Garden

I trained in fine arts and the restoration of paintings at the Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp and began working with textiles after my children were born. It was just not practical to be working away with oil paint and turpentine while toddlers were crawling around me. That’s when my love for working with textiles originated. Textiles are much more tactile than paint and they offer endless possibilities. You can make textile paintings with them or textile sculptures, you can work color into them or use deformation techniques.

 

I make textile paintings and always use vintage or used textiles. I love recycling. This is the only connection between my work and the original idea of patchwork: to make something beautiful or useful with discarded textiles.

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I use cotton, silk and mixed fibers, often hand dyed, which I machine stitch and hand embroider. More or less realistic, my works are inspired by nature. Trees, birds, flowers and light playing with shadow are endless sources of inspiration. I work from photos that I take walking and traveling.

 

The starting point of each work is a drawing that I make and transfer to the backing. This serves as the pattern for the textile collage. When every little piece is exactly where it should be, I machine stitch over it and hand embroider the details.

 

I like to place my work on the bridge between ‘art’ and ‘craft’.

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