Vintage Fabrics & Embellishments With Louise O’Hara
From countryside to shoreline, Louise O’Hara’s landscapes capture her memories of childhood holidays spent in England’s glorious Lake District and Yorkshire, with their rich layers of paint, vintage fabrics and embellishments.
By Janai Velez
Her signature mixed-media artworks are “rugged northern landscapes with brooding skies and lighter coastal scenes” surrounding classic cottages and created with layer upon layer of materials and techniques. They’re based on memories of places she’s visited and photographic references.
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Each is created by first painting the landscape, then adding drawings and upcycled items for foreground tactility and perspective. Pieces of vintage handkerchiefs and dollies are dyed and stitched on the artwork to replicate mottled fields. Lace frayed along the edges represents waves, and copper-wire-stemmed flowers with French-knot and button heads sprout from the ground.
Although Louise’s sewing machine is called into service for some stitched detailing and to help anchor sections into place, the multi-layer demands on the machinery does take its toll. “I have to have my sewing machine regularly serviced. The maintenance man always rolls his eyes, as my machine does work hard for me!”
Pieces are produced in small collections, often in seasonal colour combinations; she might work on spring themes one week and summer the next, but is drawn again and again to her favourite autumn/winter colour palette – deep blues, cold greys, burnt umbers and crisp white.
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Time spent dying and painting fabric and paper is relished. “I have ‘play days’ where I experiment with media in different ways,” she says. All of which takes place in her artistically cluttered workroom, in her home in Cheshire. “My studio is filled to the rafters with items that are often overlooked in everyday life; items that most people take for granted, like buttons, rusty bottletops, typewriters, books, vintage fabrics. I love the fact that the items I collect offer a trace of the past and that they have a history of their own and stories to tell”.
These materials are gathered from charity stores as well as second-hand and antique shops. “I look for things that evoke memories within me. I want to rejuvenate them and breathe new life into them so they can continue in a cycle,” says Louise. “If I’m not happy with the artwork after a time of reflection, I’ll cut it up and reuse the sections again, so nothing is ever wasted.”
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As a side business to creating, exhibiting and selling the physical artworks (which vary in size from 5 x 5in (12.5 x 12.5cm) to 30 x 30in (76 x 76cm), photos of her textile landscapes are also digitally printed onto heavyweight cotton and made into cushions, and prints of her work are available as greeting cards and wall art. So you can have your own piece of bucolic bliss in more ways than one, courtesy of Louise O’Hara.
For more information on Louise O’Hara, of Louise O’Hara Art visit www.louiseohara.co.uk and uk.pinterest.com/louiseOHaraArt/my-work. To purchase her artwork and cushions, visit www.facebook.com/LouiseOHaraArt and www.etsy.com/uk/shop/LouiseOHaraArt. You can also contact Louise via email, art@louiseohara.co.uk.
