Artist Statement
I am a contemporary artist working primarily with textiles, photography and stitch. Family photographs, cloth and stitch form the foundation of my practice. Through free-motion embroidery, screen printing and photographic processes, I create layered textile works that examine memory, care and the emotional ties that connect generations. My practice sits within contemporary textile art, using traditional materials and processes in ways that explore personal experience, identity, inheritance and the complexities of remembering.
Drawing from my own family history, I use textiles not simply to represent the past but to explore how memories are carried, altered and preserved through making. Photographs are transferred onto fabric through screen printing and cyanotype before being disrupted by pleating, layering and free-motion embroidery. Images are partially concealed and revealed, echoing the way memory is never fixed but continually reshaped by time, grief and experience. Stitch becomes both a physical and emotional language—repairing, connecting and marking absence as much as presence.
My work is rooted in ordinary moments that hold extraordinary emotional weight: caring for my father and mother during illness, becoming a mother, and reflecting on the impact of my brother's death. These experiences have deepened my understanding of inheritance—not only through physical resemblance but through the quieter legacies of care, resilience, love and loss that pass between generations.
As a contemporary textile artist, I am interested in the space between photography and cloth, image and object, memory and shared experience. I explore how familiar domestic materials can be transformed into contemporary artworks that carry both visual and emotional histories. The tactile qualities of fabric, the fragility of photographs and the repetitive act of stitching allow me to investigate the relationship between material, memory and lived experience.
The domestic spaces and materials that appear throughout my work are not simply settings or objects; they are repositories of memory. Worn fabrics, family photographs, stitched surfaces and botanical imagery become carriers of personal history, revealing how everyday rituals can embody profound acts of love and remembrance. The slow, repetitive nature of stitching mirrors the gradual process of remembering, where fragments are revisited, repaired and held together.
Although autobiographical, my practice seeks to create space for shared reflection. Family photographs exist in many homes, and acts of caring for those we love are universal experiences. By transforming these intimate narratives into contemporary textile works, I invite viewers to consider their own histories and the people who continue to shape them.
Ultimately, I see textiles as a way of holding what cannot be held. Through stitching, printing and layering, I preserve fragile memories while acknowledging that they remain incomplete, shifting and beautifully human. My practice brings together the intimacy of family history with the possibilities of contemporary textile art, using cloth, image and stitch to explore how we remember, how we care, and what we carry forward.
Pauline Kiernan
