Inspired by the Coast – National Poetry Day

Jane Colquhoun’s delicate textile pieces are beautiful, detailed works based on her observations of hikers on the Path. Jane shares her art practice, and relationship with the coastal environment.

“Mostly, the inspiration for my textile artwork has been from landscape, particularly the Isle of Purbeck where I grew up and now live. Following the death of my mother my work has been more inward looking and about themes of belonging and loss. The piece that Amanda wrote her poem about was created as part of a group show called Waymarked, where a group of Purbeck artists that run the Boilerhouse Gallery in Corfe Castle, responded to the Coast Path around Durlston. I spend plenty of time on the cliff path and have done since childhood. I spent time observing and drawing walkers and the way they observe and respond to the landscape that I know so well.

Textile artwork, ‘Your place in the Family of Things’

I recently started to walk further westwards on the South West Coast Path and intend to walk all of it in stages, mostly in sequence. So far, I have completed sections from Shell Bay as far as Ringstead ( though I have already walked parts in West Dorset, Devon and Cornwall and Somerset in the past.). I am one of a group of walkers, who also swim together that includes Amanda and myself. We have regularly walked from Swanage and dipped at Winspit, with a follow up pasty and pint at the Square and Compass in Worth Matravers.

My work is often related to poetry and my observations and experiences of people and nature. For the piece that was entitled ‘Your place in the family of things’ the title was taken from the last lines of a poem by Mary Oliver called Wild Geese, that for me is about loss and loneliness and belonging. I felt that my observant walkers were enjoying belonging with each other and the natural world, giving a sense of the interconnectedness of everything. This theme occurs in my other pieces about kinship between generations and groups with shared interests. The piece was exhibited at Durslton Castle Fine Foundation Gallery last year for this exhibition called Waymarked and later framed in The Sherborne as part of a Dorset Makers exhibition, which is where Amanda saw the work and asked if she could write about it.

In my textile landscapes I have always used found materials and collected or donated fabrics. My aim more recently has been to become more fully sustainable, so I celebrate the use of all kinds of waste materials in my figure work. The walkers are layered with all sorts of scraps: paper, sheer fabrics, printed imagery so that they appear to be a part of the landscape they have been experiencing.”

Amanda Griffin’s poem ‘Walking’ is written in direct response to Jane’s hiker textile pieces and is a beautiful collaboration between the two artists. Amanda says,

“I’ve been walking on the SWCP near Purbeck for several years. Jane and I walk together with a group of local women from Swanage on Thursdays. We enjoy the SWCP across all seasons – sometimes a walk includes a swim – sometimes a detour into a cave with ammonites – sometimes we get drenched from downpours. We usually stop to share snacks or a packed lunch and bring folding sit mats to make a rock more comfortable and command a breathtaking view that no restaurant can rival! Sometimes of course we find ourselves in one of the fantastic pubs just off the SWCP like the Square and Compass at Worth Matravers or The Smugglers Inn at Osmington. “

“There were so many things about Jane’s textile piece about walking that drew me in when I saw it in an exhibition. The piece reveals the careful study of individual hikers – all with their own stories; the reference in the title to a wonderful poem called Wild Geese by Mary Oliver; the frayed dropping threads of the hikers, like the lines of their lives.

I saw it at a particularly hard time personally. I had lost my mother and learnt that therapy could be found in the rhythmic left to right alignment of walking to help me think through grief and loss.

Thighs burn at the steep climbs near Worbarrow Bay and reward lungs with fresh sea air and eyes with the expanse of a silvery glittering sea. These walks along the SWCP bring simple strands of peace and beauty to thread through the texture of our lives.”