Scottish painter and textile artist Alison Johnston‘s exhibition at Dundas St Gallery in Edinburgh is a showcase of 41 unique textile wall hangings, made from machine-stitching and hand-embroidery.
After spending years as a traditional artist, Alison turned her painterly skills to creating textile wall hangings made using machine stitching and hand embroidery. Over 40 of them are on display here, along with high-quality giclee mounted prints of three of them. Five generations of Alison’s family have been involved in weaving, knitwear and textiles.
Alison will be giving brief informal talks at the Gallery on her work on Wednesdays 12th, 19th and 26th March at 2pm, and on Sunday 16th & 23rd March at 3pm, and will be available each day at the Gallery.
Alison’s Instagram page can be found here.
Alison, from Edinburgh, says reaching a milestone birthday during the covid-19 pandemic helped spur her on to fulfil her long-held ambition. “I turned 60 in 2020 and I just thought, ‘Life’s too short’,” she says. “I’ve always wanted to do this full-time. When I realised I had all this time ahead of me in lockdown, I decided to go for it and use that time creatively and develop new ideas in my work. When normality started to comeback, I knew I wanted to carry on.”
Alison is no stranger to overcoming barriers, having succeeded in a variety of jobs from knitwear entrepreneur to art therapist, all while being severely deaf. She says: “I’ve had a lot of challenges working in the hearing world, but it has never stopped me doing what I want to do. Now I can’t wait for people to see my work.”
Alison was born in Galashiels and is proud of the fact that she is the fifth generation of her family to work in with textiles. In her twenties, she studied knitwear design at the Scottish College of Textiles in Galashiels, and launched her own knitwear business, making jumpers and cardigans which were stocked by stores such as Jenners. Having worked as a clinical support worker in hospitals, she studied for a degree in art therapy in her forties and spent a decade working with adults with complex disabilities and dementia.
She says: “A lot of the people I worked with were not able to communicate well verbally, but I think my deafness gave me a kind of sixth sense, I could be more attuned to what they were trying to communicate.” When lockdown happened in 2020, she started making large scale textile pieces inspired by a recent trip-of-a-lifetime to Mexico. Others, like Glimmer of Hope were directly inspired by the pandemic.
Even breaking her ankle in three places in 2021 didn’t hold her back. She used the time to teach herself to embroider by hand, and now incorporates that into her work. “I love starting off with a few scraps of fabric and seeing something grow and grow. “Some people are very fortunate and are ready to go straight from art college and become established artists, but I know that wasn’t right for me. ‘I think all the experience I’ve picked up from the journey of my life has given me the confidence to do it now.”
With thanks to Susan Mansfield for supplying extra material.
