Mary Morrison

Mary Morrison

With a focus on portraiture work, influenced by my family’s consistent documentation of their lives. My work makes a comment on how they lived and pays homage to a by gone time. I use media found in from archive to reinterpret and re-imagine each photograph, keeping the archive alive and giving those memories new life. Capturing a moment now is so uncomplicated and distracts from resonance in the present moment. My family’s life growing up wasn’t a rich one, developing photographs was a luxury and there was careful consideration to each conclusive moment. In this respect, I take special care in preserving each moment as a piece of artwork; I want the viewer to reminisce in moments from their own life, recognising the feelings and memories of similar times.

Mary Rebecca Morrison is a textile artist living and working in Belfast, Northern Ireland. She attended the Belfast School of Art, Ulster University in 2016 studying a foundation year in Art & Design where she found a love for textiles. Achieving a first class honours in BA Textile Art, Design and Fashion in 2020, through many experiments with different mediums a love for embroidery would triumph over the rest. Delving further Mary explored both hand and machine embroidery concluding with a digital start.

Overtime, Mary developed a personal aesthetic featuring vibrant and densely stitched images of her family with light outlines and the use of applique to add depth and texture. Her work is portraiture focused and influenced by her family’s history, making a comment on how they lived and paying homage to the time that has past. She takes her inspiration from archival photographs; having always being intrigued by her family’s early life and the stories that have been passed down through generations.

Mary’s work begins as a photograph which is then meticulously hand drawn from concept and actualised using specialist designing software, before being embroidered using an embroidery machine and hand finished. Mary uses techniques to build the surfaces and textures of her work, the complexity of each piece stemming from the composition itself and deliberate use of colour.

Mary Morrison
Mary Morrison
Mary Morrison
Mary Morrison
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