Delamore Art - Every Day in May - 1030 - 1630

After decades as a writer and translator, I discovered that my true native language is hand embroidery. The vocabulary of stitches, the language of colour and the syntax of textures, gave me the fluency and range I had been looking for all my life. I emerged as a self-taught artist at Delamore in 2024. Saving Graces are three works in honour of healing plants and herbal medicine. Drawing on medieval Venetian–Adriatic altarpieces, the designs use gold, symmetry, embellishment and enclosure to invite contemplation of the plants as sacred figures. In a sense, all hand embroidery is a practice of devotion: slow, patient and faithful to an ideal. While this series focuses on flora, my work continues to engage with the broader natural world—from the power and delicate intricacies of sea creatures to the quiet resilience of vegetables and fungi — reflecting the rhythms, forms and mysteries I observe. Threading its way through the sheer joy in my observations is always the same question; what do we lose, personally and collectively, when our deeper connection with the natural world is no longer held with reverence?