I make pictures, using mainly indigo-dyed fabrics, wall-hangings and scarves, using shibori (Japanese shaped resist techniques), and cyanotype.
Also woodcuts as pictures and cards.
Brought up in Cambridge and spending childhood holidays on the Norfolk coast, the sea became a recurrent theme.
After three years art training and inspired by Kathleen Raine’s “the main function of art is to heal the soul”, I trained to become an art therapist and taught painting and drawing in Community Education while my children grew up. Motivated by the Japanese approach to design, indigo dyeing has become a vehicle for wall-hangings and fabric collages and scarves, and more recently cyanotype— which produces “indigo” from a totally different source—that of light-sensitive chemicals.
I run indigo dyeing workshops, mostly from my home in Radwinter near Saffron Walden, where you can transform (“up-cycle”) your clothes and experiment with the various shibori techniques to design your own scarves etc.
I have work in private collections in many countries, as well as schools and colleges and have sold through several galleries in the East Anglian region including “Primavera” in Cambridge. In 2009 I had a solo exhibition at The Church Street Gallery in Saffron Walden, and in 2014 at The Exchange Gallery, Saffron Walden.
I also show with Cambridge Open Studios – (www.cambridgeopenstudios.org).
WEBSITE: www.indigosilks.co.uk
PHONE: 01799 599371
EMAIL: clarissa@clarissacochran.com
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