Teresa Whitfield

Teresa Whitfield’s work is an examination through drawing of lace making and needlework and is the outcome of research into the lace collection at the Victoria and Albert Museum as well as the artist’s own collection of lace.

Samples are painstakingly reconstructed in white ink, eschewing technology or rather embracing the imperfections inherent with the hand-made objects to which the drawings refer. The drawing technique utilised is so close to the process of using thread that the images are more a re-enactment of the lace making process, than simply a likeness to the end product.

Quietly awe-inspiring, the deceptive simplicity of the detailed, repetitive mark-making provokes memories of a time before mass production when hand-made textiles were part of everyday domestic life.

Neither grand nor imposing, without gesture or expression, the drawings pay homage to the skills of women whose work is more commonly seen in portraits by the old masters, where its presence signified the wealth and social position of the subject.

Through the sheer accuracy of her reproductions, the artist provokes questions about authorship and originality, but often she confounds the viewer by distorting reality, conceiving her own designs and merging and reinventing the traditional techniques of lace making.