artist statement
I Take My Seat
Bits and Pieces of ideas that my witness expressed in our two conversations made it into the overall concept for the artwork. Her chair and the idea that she ‘takes her seat in the room with her client’ meaning being there fully for them was the source and inspiration for I Take My Seat.
I Take My Seat is made in layers as the concepts and processes and meanings are layered; from holding space for sometimes actual evil to the positivity and renewal of ‘grass greening’ even in the midst of trauma.
The top panel lifts to reveal the “nature of Evil as Lights absence” beneath. She uses a profound metaphor for this. She holds the concept of the ‘Grass greening’ even through the most profound trauma. 
The piece had an obvious start, it right away included her chair, the chair she counsels in.
Converging Tracks
Converging Tracks is a ‘counterchange’ to I Take My Seat, meaning the colours, forms, ideas and textures partially ‘reverse’ from the other piece, the grass greening for example occupies the full center in a kind of profusion (where it is on the side only and buried a bit in I Take My Seat). This is (more or less) based on my own experience in working with my witness’s thought’s.
And I am impacted by the idea of the ‘converging tracks’ present in her thoughts and her poetry and meaning in my own way of composing a piece. You may scan the QR code to listen to the poem Convergence.
bio
Eleanor works in the textile arts field involved in sewing and embroidery for most of her life in some way or another, She says she actually thinks in cloth and thread combinations as they relate to drawing. For a number of years, Eleanor has been doing sewing machine embroidery. More recently she has been developing techniques in hand embroidery to create large-scale portraits.
She has a BFA from the University of Manitoba and has exhibited work both as a drawer, painter and an artist working in textiles in Canada and in the UK. Teaching is an essential part of her creative purpose.
