Textile Art

“My work is intended to make people laugh”, says artist Clare Rose, when pressed to describe her wonderfully witty and highly textural images.

Animals, plants, fields and bushes dominate the subject matter of these brilliantly coloured mixed media pictures- and as such, they reflect the bust, sometimes chaotic world that Clare Rose moves in.

Brought up in the Sussex countryside, Clare is now married to Shaun the vet, and is the mother of a thirteen-year-old boy. A keen gardener, and surrogate mum to three dogs, two cats, two rats, the occasional hedgehog and bird, she has distilled the joyfulness of her own busy, noisy world into her work- in a way that also reflects her natural comedic sense.

She uses a variety of media and tries to incorporate different fibres into one piece, to increase the visual interest. Hand-made felt, Merino wool for its softness, Finnish wool for its strength, mohair, silk and flax, alongside an assortment of objet trouves - from buttons to beads and sequins.

Like the softer textural areas of her images, these are brilliantly coloured, and hark back to the artist’s work as a successful designer and creator of costume jewellery.

“The most important thing in my work is humour and a sense of happiness. I think that when you purchase a piece of art in any medium, you will probably be looking at it most days, and if that lifts your mood and makes you smile, even for the few seconds that your eyes pass over it, then have achieved what I set out to do!”