Laura Kemshall: Everything We Are
Laura Kemshall is an artist working with print, textiles and paint. She has won many awards (including first prize for quilts entered into the FOQ competition) and is co-host of online art, craft and design school DesignMatters TV. Laura has been an integral part of FOQ for many years, having been part of numerous group exhibits and an exhibition with her mother, Linda Kemshall (also a famous quilt artist), so we are delighted to welcome Laura back for our 20th birthday.
Laura’s exhibition is an illustration of everything that can’t be said in words or out loud. The places we’ve been, and we find ourselves in, the sound of the birds, the swallows and the house martins, the nest and the cage. The black thorns against the cold winter sky, the hollow tree and the open field. The glass and the screaming colour of nature on a black background. The stories we tell, and we hear, the thought and the memory.
The dates and the times and everything that flows in between and unmeasured. The page of the book, the pencil line and the paint. The smudge, the spill and the scar. The stitches and the unpicking. The people we love and the ones who love us, the ones who we stay awake for, the midnight deals, the lace, the sound of your guitar.
The life you hand me down, the maker and the made, the one I hold in my embrace, the freedom and the fear. The question and the answers.
Everything that you made and gave to me, everything I make and give to you. These small things, this tangle of knotted threads, that make us everything we are.
