The Seaweed Series -The Beginning of the obsession.

In 2016 on a trip to a beach in Fife I found a huge blade of sugar kelp still attached by its holdfast to a rock, I produced this seaweed tapestry shortly after I returned. As a compulsive reader of any subject I am interested in I soon realised that my knowledge of seaweeds was pitiful despite a childhood spent in rockpools. I had long been obsessed by seaweed attached to rocks without ever considering why only some species did this this and could like most people name only one or two very common species.  Since then I have read, explored and painted producing tapestries ceramics and paintings celebrating this fascinating, diverse and ecologically vital life form. I now scour the strandline on beaches and explore the intertidal zones on our coastlines walking or swimming. Below are some examples of how my tapestries are produced from those expeditions.

Miniatures woven from watercolour studies of seaweed

Seaweed on Shell

Bladderwrack and Irish Moss
Woven on double warps at 5 and 10 warps/inch in cottons, silks and mohair.

Oarweed and Barnacles

Hornwrack and Eggwrack

Hornwrack is not a seaweed, it is composed of tiny animals called Zooids that feed on particles in the water. The Eggwrack pods which grow at a rate of one a year, are woven so they pop out from the tapestry surface.

Bladderwrack and Redrags miniatures

Shallows - sometimes the light box is useful with very delicate fragments