Stitched Landscapes With Eleri Mills
by Polly Leonard
Growing up on a Welsh farm, artist Eleri Mills has always had a love for the land. She was born in Llangadfan, Powys, and now considers the beautiful landscapes that surround this small community to be the greatest influence on her work. Eleri Mills studied Art and Design at Manchester Polytechnic before returning to live and work in the same Welsh-speaking rural community in which she was brought up.
Eleri has a dynamic and multi-layered artistic style; she creates exquisite hand-stitched pieces and mixed media paintings that depict a personal, timeless and poetic vision of Wales. Yet while Eleri seeks to pay homage to the ancestral lands and histories of Wales, her work remains highly contemporary.
Eleri's stitched pieces and painting have been exhibited in both London and Wales, throughout Europe, the USA and Japan. Eleri was elected to the Royal Cambrian Academy in 2000. Previously the winner of the Most Outstanding Exhibit at the Art of Stitch Exhibition at the Barbican, London, in 2010 she won the Creative Wales Ambassador award from the Arts Council of Wales and was artist-in-residence at Columbia University, New York in 2012.
Eleri will be giving a workshop on stitching landscapes in June, which will start with simple mark-making ideas on paper before progressing towards a finished piece. Throughout the day Eleri will inspire and guide participants to interpret these drawings in materials and threads.