Woman With A Fish

By Emily Tull

Thread painting, hand stitched on hessiah, muslin, cotton twill and furnishing fabric.

30.48 x 30.48 cm

Why Sue Stone?

I am obsessed with faces. They show a person’s life, and can look different on a daily basis, a perfect canvas to convey different sides of your character. But more than this, my fascination is with colouration and fragility of skin and within my portraits I strive to bring these issues across. My interest is to equally portray the skin alongside a representation of the sitter. I am a thread painter, instead of using paint I hand stitch my subjects, this gives me a control over my tones and the details- I liken the technique to drawing with coloured pencils. My portraits are fragmented inspired relics and torn wallpaper, giving a broken-up view of the sitter yet recognisable at the same time.

When I was asked to take part in this exhibition, I knew straight away who the subject should be. Sue Stone’s portraits  are fascinating to me, when you look at them, they convey so much character with actually not a lot of detail (especially facially). The way Sue outlines details on the face reminds me of my early portraits which were very minimal, and I felt that our two styles could be interwoven. For this portrait I recreated her stitching style for the “line drawing” details alongside my fragments.

About the Artist

Emily has exhibited internationally, regularly in London, and across Kent in group and solo shows. Winning a Kent Creative Award for Visual Art (2017) she has also been a finalist in the Winter Pride Art Awards (2015), selected for the Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition, Mall Galleries, Ruth Borchard Selt Portrait Prize and has been a contestant in Sky Art’s Portrait Artist of the Year 2014.