I'll Blow Your House Down from the Huff and Puff Series (SOLD)
By Vivienne Beaumont
Textile/machine embroidery on linen
Original artworks
Framed
I'll Blow Your House Down: Framed size H: 51cm x W: 58cm - £600 - SOLD
Vivienne Beaumont has been with us from the start. She is highly innovative, in style and topic choice, and is making her mark on the influential regional arts scene
Combining strong, clear drawing with depictions of equally strong women, sometimes in disturbing or threatening situations, she might be described as a textile successor to Paula Rego, working in fabrics and threads instead of Rego's pastels.
Inspired by her study of mycelium, nature’s composting system, Vivienne has created a new body of work to reflect global sustainability themes around the latest techniques in the building of homes and shelters. Nature’s power to transform and renew has inspired the imagery. It's a story of hope.
In her Huff and Puff series, the mycelium web transforms golden harvest waste into compostable packaging and wall insulation, avoiding landfill and offering hope in a time of universal anxiety about pollution and wastage of natural resources.
Inventively, she retells the three little pigs fairytale, creating a new narrative where figures are huffing and puffing, blowing spores to knit together straw, twigs and bricks, while the maiden works to spin straw into gold.
The wolf or stranger in Vivienne's version is wild and destructive, representing unconscious devouring powers. The three little pigs are an example of the progressive identity, teaching how intelligence makes us successful. The houses are made from the sustainable materials - straw, sticks and brick. They are symbolic of progress, as we now have the technology to combine these materials into something better, with mycelium as the glue.
The series is predominantly worked in machine embroidery, on printed grounds, embellished with fibres, hand stitching, collage and Suffolk puffs.
ABOUT VIVIENNE BEAUMONT
Vivienne's extraordinary textile work is shaped by stories and symbols. She takes inspiration from ancient myths, fairy tales and nature, from female archetypes and the process of transformation – growing up and growing old. Rites of passage, risks and vulnerabilities pepper her narratives.
Based on concepts she first developed during her MA, her visual stories are ripe with seeds, pomegranates and scenes of harvest and fertility. Textile pictures feature goddesses and their ability to relate to other people and other creatures.
Feminists might easily find an affinity with her work – and so might anyone looking for hidden meanings and intriguing imagery drawn from centuries of story-telling and emotional experience.
She starts with sketches and a drawing, transforming the design onto fabric in paint or by mono-printing. Using machine embroidery, print and collaged textile elements, she works with threads as other artists do with paint – blending, composing and layering. The results are visually stunning, as well as tactile.
“I try to capture something something of the folk tale or fairy tale: the jeopardy of the miller’s daughter, the alchemy of weaving straw into gold. These tales have endured the ages, suggesting they hold a deeper meaning for us. ...Mothers and daughters, love and rites of passage – the repeated cycles from one generation to the next – these loom large in my textile story.”
A former student of Fine Art in Cardiff and awarded a medal of Excellence from City & Guilds, Vivienne is a retired teacher based in Shropshire. We are honoured to be one of the first galleries to select and show her work.