GRAEME BLACK & EMMA JO WEBSTER
Scotland
Tapestry Collaboration 2023
The play of light on ancient tree bark – its intricate patterns and subtle palette – translate beautifully to tapestry.
In 2021, Graeme invited the Scottish master weaver Emma Jo Webster to create a piece based on the close-up paintings of trees that have been the focus of his practice since he settled in Yorkshire. The two met as students at Edinburgh Art College in the late 1980s, and composed the tapestry together, by isolating and enlarging small details and sections of Graeme’s canvases. His former career in fashion – a collaborative art that sees designs brought to life by a series of makers and artisans – has bred in him a fascination for the possibilities generated by artist partnerships, where each interprets and expands upon the other’s work.
He was equally drawn by the similarities between thread and paint: how tiny adjustments to pigment on his palette match the twisting of yarns into the tensioned warp of a loom.
Graeme’s paintings reflect the look and feel of tree bark in all weathers and seasons, shifting from a gentle coolness, through jewel tones to an intense textural depth.
To reenact those qualities in woven form, Emma Jo chose fine threads of linen and mercerised cotton – its lustre brings a gentle sheen to the surface of the finished tapestry. ‘I wanted to keep the light play yet suggest the painting’s strength of colour,’ she says.
Where thickness of paint or the sweeps of Graeme’s palette knife suggested crinkles and bulges, she applied a double or triple weave, creating an extraordinary range of surface textures and painterly effects.
Woven on a simple scaffold loom, using techniques similar to the historic Gobelin manufactory of Paris, the tapestry grew slowly in Emma-Jo’s peaceful Glasgow studio over 18 months. A sense of its gentle begetting and the passage of time are still present in the finished piece, along with the joy of creating in concert.