It is far more about an encounter in nature, that directness of that moment in time where you encounter something, or it is unearthed in front of you.
Abigail is part of the duo Forest + Found with partner Max Bainbridge, whom she met at Chelsea College of Art. Although their practices are different, both use the forest and the found materials in it as their starting point. Walks through the woods offer them a variety of materials and inspiration. Whilst Max collects felled trees to turn into sculptural vessels, Abigail finds leaves, bark, roots, branches and stones.
Back in her studio, Abigail combines her material in the manner of an alchemist, burning it, boiling, cooking it, blending it together with pieces of calico, resulting in pieces rich in pigments, colours, tints and paint. Then patiently she will hand sew these coloured fragments onto natural calico creating large textiles. Although her works are immersed in the tradition of quilting, embroidery, tapestry, her pieces are as much abstract paintings, where the grandiose gesture and the brushstroke is replaced by the quiet stitch and burning.
Her “paintings” can be seen as landscapes, spatially using the fabric to tell a story of a place, a forest, conjuring its essence, its history and materiality. The strength and beauty of her pieces - although apparently simple- lie in the layering, the making and their rich inherent materiality, resulting in compelling testimonies of craftsmanship.
Working across textiles, drawing and painting, her work explores the histories of piecework, pigment and cloth. Referencing simplicity in the gesture and movement of the hand, her work seeks a connection to the psychology of landscape through the reflective nature of organic colour and embodied interactions with the natural. The time-based nature of her work produces large-scale images that explore the liminal space of the constructed canvas, while challenging the relationship between the imagined and the actual through her use of a material language of painting and textile combined.
Abigail was born in London in 1991 and studied Fine Art at Byam Shaw School of Art, the San Francisco Art Institute and Chelsea College of Art, where she graduated in 2013 as a painter and sculptor. She has been working with jaggedart since 2017.