Gyllian Thomson
I graduated from Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art with a First-Class Honours degree in Constructed Textiles and Printmaking in 1995.
In 2021, after 21 years focusing on my career in teaching, I have returned to my practice as a full-time creator in my field of handwoven Tapestry. Last year, 2022, I was thrilled to win the Scottish Arts Club Award for my Tapestry, Linear Corridor in the Reverb exhibition with Visual Arts Scotland in Edinburgh. I also achieved success at the 130th exhibition by the Scottish Society of Artists at the Royal Scottish Academy, winning an award for my Tapestries Transactions in Contrast- Land and Sea and The Red Wave. I am very much looking forward to my prize of a three month residency at Edinburgh Printmakers this year.
Gyllian’s work is driven by the balance of shapes and lines; however, the visual elements of colour are the life source in her tapestries. The power of colour in her work creates clashing and layering that when woven has a unique visual effect. It is this density and vividness that creates feeling when viewing her work and this is what is so important to her in the drive to make textiles an art form.
There is a natural progress or progression in her work. She takes her paintings as far as they can go then continues into tapestry. However both her painting and tapestries exist alongside one another and it’s impossible to have one without the other. The delineation and scoring in her painting suggests the warp and weave of her tapestries, while the weavings themselves often appear from the most interesting sections of her paintings. They can be appreciated together or separately.
Although depicting landscapes Gyllian’s intention is never to show land in the literal sense, instead she wants to show the emotional effect the land has on her and how it has shaped her. Her work suggests displacement, lines in stones, water, horizons, and paths that go on indefinitely.
My work does not show land in the literal sense, instead it shows the emotional effect the land has on me. Suggesting displacement, lines in stones, water, horizons, and paths that go on indefinitely.
Showing the single result