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ARTIST's OWN STUDIO
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RUPACHITTA ROBERTSON - artist/ Sculptor
I am a bit of a Jack of all trades. A painter, sculptor, designer, a Gaelic teacher, gardener, shed builder, photographer, Buddhist etc. My interest moves about, responding to the resources and stimulation of the different places I have lived. I studied Fine art at Glasgow School of Art, specialising in sculpture.
The environment has always been central to my work. This first found expression working on the Clydeside docks as they were being filled in, marking the transition from an industrial era to another. I made window displays in London, designed shops throughout Europe and was a buyer and designer for an international gift company.
Back in Scotland I became a Gaelic teacher and started to pick up the threads of my own art practice. The heavy engineering works near me in Alness kindly let me take materials from their skips to be welded into art. When I moved to Lewis in 2014, after many years visiting here with my Gaelic medium pupils, I was drawn to be part of a Gaelic speaking community.
I work in paint, recently experimenting with oils, I sculpt using clay and I make patchwork quilts in Harris tweed.
The ever changing light and colours of the landscape inspire me and then I wrestle with materials to try to express my response to that. Most recently I have been focusing on portraiture both in 2D and 3D. I love to sit and sketch people, sometimes working these up to paintings or clay sculptures. This is a rare chance to spend time with local people, hear about their lives and discuss the changes they have seen as more and more incomers like myself come to live on the islands.
Currently I am working on a commission for two Harris tweed patchwork quilts and am happy to do commissions in any medium.
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ASHOKASHRI - textile art
ARTIST's OWN STUDIO
From my studio at Shoreside and being in the Lewis landscape, I soak up atmosphere, inspiration and feeling responses, and collect fragments of materials that attract me. I am drawn to the basic elements; earth, stone, metal, water, and to bone, wood, plastic, fabric, seaweed … These become the raw materials for my work, transforming sometimes by design and sometimes with unpredictable results.
My work develops like a kind of alchemy, through the interaction between ideas, material and the process of making. Working intuitively using a variety of print and dye processes – including screen and mono print, wax resist, botanical dyeing and rusting - to create textured backgrounds. More recently I’ve begun to print with earth pigments using a soya milk binder, as it doesn’t involve any pollutants. I then add and subtract through collage, fold, stuff, cut, stitch, distress, bond, further marks until the idea, the materials and the process come together. Working in both 2 and 3D I build up multiple layers to make sense of the world, inner and outer.
Ashokashri@gmail.com Ashokashritextiles.wordpress.com Instagram @ashokashritextiles
