Rebecca Roberts

Region: Northeast

I learned sewing as a young girl, and working with it as a painting medium feels natural to me. Each painting begins with the relationship between two or three fabrics; their color, texture or pattern. The painting develops as I take the pieces of fabric apart (by cutting) and put them back together (by sewing) over and over again. I begin working in a very intuitive and meditative way; the arrangement of the shapes develops slowly and is a result of the choices I make. The painting changes dramatically when I stretch it over the stretcher. This process is just as important to me as sewing the pieces together. I’m interested in the tension on the seams and the changes that happen to the shapes. The nature of this work is that the pieces often end up resembling landscapes, maps and other visual phenomena that occur when man and nature occupy the same space.