Cathy Tipping's needlepoint work never ceases to amaze. After a process of photographing friends, the artist then played with the kinds of filters that you would have attempted using the first few times you fumbled your way through Photoshop. The result is a play between a labour intensive craft and a part digitally altered portrait rendered in carefully chosen shades of coloured wool. Through the editing process, they become artifacts of the real self they contain, reduced to pixels and digital code. I love the (perhaps personal) link between the reduction of these images into digital code and colour codes listed on tapestry wool. The portraits have an incredible lifelike quality that is difficult to create in longstitch and despite their altered states, are engaging and beautifully rendered. After a short four day stint at Tinning Street Presents, Cathy Tipping sold all eleven portraits. Go Cathy! Check out more of her work online through the link above.
Mosaic Nami
Emboss Di
Pinch Phil
Installation view
