Mary La Trobe Bateman

Clare Lane

Describe your work

I make wall canvases of varying sizes.My work is a combination of the high tech. digital and the low tech. stitch. I create my colour dominated images on computer and produce digitally printed fabric which I then fill with yet more colourful stitch. The dot based nature of the pixel has a peculiar link to the stitch which creates an affinity between the two which I never predicted.

Can you say what influences your work?

Our everyday urban habitat in a nutshell. I am strongly influenced not just by architecture but by the ordinary elements or our built landscape and of course my passion for the ruin, either old castles or elements or urban dereliction.

What made you decide to work with textiles?

The John Lewis haberdashery department did it for me around the age of nine. The fabric, ribbons and cottons all displayed in a huge array of colour, was a bit like being in a sweet shop. I started collecting cotton reels and buttons and then progressed onto making clothes. It just developed from there.

After the festival has finished, have you got plans for the future?

I am hoping to show at Origin again this year which will be in October so with any luck I'll be flat out getting work ready for that. However I would like a good derelict site to get my teeth into so I will also be on the hunt for likely places.