Successful Artist Returns to Timeless Textiles.

Fibre artist Jan Clark will showcase her intimate connection with the Australian landscape in a new exhibition Immanence, scheduled to open in April 2014 at Timeless Textiles Gallery in Islington.

“Immanence is often understood to mean the manifestation of the divine when experienced in the material world,” Clark explains. “The intention behind my work is to convey the spiritual link with the natural world that many people experience when in the landscape, whether it is their backyard, the park or the Australian bush.”

Clark, who also teaches workshops at Timeless Textiles, brings her recognisable art making style back to the gallery after a successful 2013 exhibition. Her work is inspired by the natural world, with the concepts developed into layered works using a mixture of printing, painting, drawing with water-soluble media, fabric collage, dry felting, dyeing and free motion machine sewing.

Blurring the lines between organic abstract motifs and natural history illustration, Clark has a distinct and exciting style. Her attention to detail is obvious in her multi-layered mixed-media textile pieces

Based in Uralla, Clark has exhibited worldwide during her career. She is an Honours graduate in Natural History Illustration and is currently completing a Master’s degree at the University of Newcastle. Clark won the 2012 Victorian Quilters Incorporated prize in the large quilt category and was highly commended for her work in the Beyond the Border show in Victoria in 2005. She has been published locally and internationally in Fiberarts Design Book 7, Contemporary QuiltingandWeaving New Rhythms.

Over the previous year, Clark’s work has involved documenting specific habitats within the Lower Hunter Valley and New England Tableland regions. She says of her new exhibition

“The images of flora and fauna have been developed in a range of styles from scientific illustration to painterly marks on textiles. The surfaces of the textiles are then layered with imagery and translucent fabrics to convey the essence of the natural world. My textiles are full of recognisable insects and plants that are the backdrop to our often busy lives. I hope to suggest to people that the mundane world around us, the familiar, the everyday, is also the bearer of the divine, the other, the spiritual nature of life.”

The Immanence exhibition opens on the 17^thof April and runs until the 11^thof May 2014.