Textile Study Group
artists and tutors sharing ideas imagination and skills
Bobby Britnell
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This is one of a set of 3 quilts, worked on natural scoured cotton, with applied gesso, monoprinting and roller printing. The tulips are applied with dyed bonded shapes with the use of Litho-coal to provide the necessary three-dimensional effects. Greater emphasis is also created by hand drawing back into the quilts. They are finally heavily machine quilted, as the detail shows, with medium weight Vilene used instead of a wadding to give a firmer finish. | |
I have spent all of my working life involved with textiles and the teaching of textiles in some form or other. In the early years I trained at a Savile Row tailoring firm based in Guildford and I also spent some very enjoyable time working in the West End of London making costumes for theatre and television for such shows as Talk of the Town, the Black and White Minstrel Show and many others.
I later trained as a secondary school teacher in textiles and taught for 12 years in a large comprehensive school where I became head of the Textiles Department. Shortly after moving to Shropshire in 1986 I began teaching City and Guilds Design and Textile Decoration Techniques and Mixed Media at Westhope College, Craven Arms, Shropshire, and later offered courses to Diploma level. I now enjoy the stimulation of working as a freelance textile artist in schools, on community projects, and for textile groups, offering day workshops and longer projects.
Although I am still happy to teach further afield most of my teaching now takes place from my own purpose built studio where I offer a wide variety of art and textile related courses. These courses address the needs of beginners through to very advanced groups, wishing to launch themselves as professional artists. I am also a distance learning tutor for the BA (Hons) Stitched Textile Course with the Julia Caprara School of Textile Arts.
As a practising textile artist I enjoy the challenge of producing new work for exhibitions and commissions. I particularly enjoy drawing and designing and current work attempts to capture a feeling of the drawn mark to create form and depth in my pieces. I love hand and machine work and evidence of both can be seen in my work. I also prefer to create my own colours through dyeing and printing my fabrics. I pursue various themes as each new exhibition demands, but a particularly favourite source of inspiration is music and dance.
I am a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and a full member of the Embroiderers' Guild as well as being an active member of the Textile Study Group. Working as a professional textile artist and teacher holds equal importance to me. I have a passion for both and I continue to search out and welcome new challenges and opportunities to further my career in embroidery and stitched textiles.
Bobby Britnell
www.bobbybritnell.co.uk
