This tapestry, set in a rose garden, and featuring two figures on a narrow bench depicts the difficulties of exploiting my own experiences as source material for my work. Is the constant digging into the darker realms of my inner self a cathartic or dangerous enterprise? The phial of medicine discarded by the figure on the left would provide relief from the constant self-examination but instead she leans into it, as represented by the figure on the right.

 

This more malevolent figure holding of the girl’s wrist might be seen as supportive, but it is also threatening, pulling her in more. Behind her back a bird of prey let loose threatens a smaller bird lured by the promise of a strawberry. Is the relief of self-examination a deal with the devil?

 

The strawberries shift from unripe ones on the left, vulnerable to the slow encroachment of a snail, to the ripe bright strawberries on the right, suggesting the sterile and fertile alternatives, enabled or blocked by the rejected medicine. Their baskets depict figures beset by intrusive thoughts and pursued by anxiety.

 

On the broken and fragmentary leash is the nonsensical phrase I use to try to ward off the equally nonsensical intrusive thoughts when they become too overwhelming. Nonetheless the tension between order and disturbance in the tapestry  reflects my process; a disciplined act of weaving that contains, yet depends upon, the very compulsions it seeks to manage. The act of weaving is one of defiance and victory.