Welcome to my third Blog Post in a series about preparations for my first Solo Exhibition at Artists Meet in the Watersmeet Centre in Rickmansworth.

I am making steady progress with my work and I now have some finished pieces at last. I recently had to write a few words about my exhibition for publicity and was asked if my exhibition had a name. Up until then I hadn’t given much thought to a title, but after a bit of thought, I came up with one. The word I decided on not only explains the work that I’ll be displaying to the visitor, but it has also helped me to make a more detailed plan of how I’m going to display my work and work out the common thread running through it. The title is ‘Landmarks’ .

‘Landmarks’ explores how elements in a landscape combine to give it a familiarity and sense of place. It might be the distinctive outline of a stand of trees, the ridges and furrows of a ploughed field or the plants and flowers that add seasonal texture and colour to a stretch of land.

In my last post I mentioned having work in the exhibition that has a common theme in different media. I have been developing this idea further - using the same imagery to inspire embroidered work and a series of nine small paintings. I’ve also been concentrating on four large monochrome embroideries that will form the main focus of the exhibition.

I have almost finished three of the monochrome embroideries. They are tiring to make as they require a lot of toing and froing on the sewing machine and some very detailed, small movements to work on the trees. These are quite nerve wracking to embroider as I don’t make any marks on the felt to guide me. This is because any marks are very difficult, if not impossible to get rid of from the surface of the felt, making it look dirty. If I have to, I use an HB pencil and use a special fabric rubber to try and remove as much as possible.

Using the same source material in different media

Once the large embroideries are completed this week, I’m moving on to finishing some hand embroidered work and a series of prints based on seed heads. It all seems to be going well, as long as I keep working steadily towards the deadline.

More news soon ….

You can also follow my progress on my Instagram feed, where I post regular pictures of my work in progress. Click on the images below to go to my page.

Sue Nicholls Designs on Instagram