Artist and textile designer, Maggie Scott creates woven, knitted, stitched and felted pieces of ’wearable art’.
Often using simple geometric shapes and returning again and again to the simplicity of stripes - sometimes distorted as with the cotton ’wave collection’ or, more recently, with Merino wool scarves produced by ’felting’ stripes of wool fibre to hand dyed or printed silk fabric, her work often focuses on the juxtaposition and interplay of one colour against another.
After graduating from of St. Martin’s School of Art in 1976, Maggie was immediately invited to the John Ashpool team based in Perugia, designing knitwear for exclusive boutiques around the world. Moving between Italy and France, she spent 4 years learning her trade before setting up her first studio in 1980.
"For more than 30 years I have always worked with my hands, usually with fibre, creating textiles, but also with paint and papier- mache…….which ever medium I remain preoccupied and fascinated with colour. Recently I rediscovered work dating back from the mid 70’s and my student days and I was surprised but also reassured by my passion for experimenting with colours…."
Her professional life as a Textile Artist has existed in parallel with her involvement in gender and race politics.
"For many years now I have been engaged with the politics of liberation and during the 1980s and 90s was very active within groups and campaigns for women in general and black women in particular, and am particularly proud of editing and publishing "Springboard" the first UK Women’s’ Yellow Pages in 1987."
New work – new directions
Until recently it had not seemed possible to combine these two passions, but the chance decision to take time out from producing wearable textiles and experiment with a series of large, autobiographical pieces led to a bursary award.
The ’Shape of Things’ bursary, (2009-12), presents an opportunity to expand this autobiographical work and further explore the larger multicultural, multi-ethnic implications of family histories. A one-woman show is now scheduled for April 2012 at Leicester Museum.
"Its exciting to move the work in another direction and continue to refine my ’nuno’ felting technique…..but it has also had an effect on the wearable textiles, the two disciplines feeding each other ….. The hand embroidery that accompanies some of the wall pieces is starting to appear in the scarves something I would never have been interested in exploring before!
