Workshop: Creating Fairy-like Birds with Racheal Speirs

Using paper and textiles participants will make fairytale-like birds Creating mixed media textile birds using reclaimed fabric, paper, water-media and embroidery on wooden floater panels. Learn how to create delicate, fairytale-esque, fabric textured artwork. Participants will learn how to incorporate fabric into their artworks and how to create whimsical compositions using a variety of materials. All materials included but students are welcome to bring natural fibers to include in the artworks. Students will also get a brief introduction to colour theory and composition.

About Racheal:
Speirs is an award winning self-taught artist who creates fascinating works using paper, fabric, sewing machine, hand stitching, gouache, watercolour, acrylic, embroidery and other objects. Her background in social work has provided her with a combination of academic discipline and practice-based professional concern, as well as insight into the basic needs of communities. This and her unique use of the medium collapses the division between conceptual art, contemporary art and the public.
Speirs masterfully uses the materials to steep "metaphors as a way to translate questions of daily life and distort the unpleasant or mundane into an absurd and fractured folk tale."

Her sense of colour and layering of the various medium creates unexpected but deliberate placement of depth and texture. It gives an approachability of play and curiosity that draws the viewer into a satisfying sense of wonder, with a bit of love, whimsy, darkness, and hope thrown into the mix. It recognizes that we are not just one thing but a multi-faceted array of many things, much like the collage-like effect of Speirs' language.

About this Workshop:
Join us in the Studio Loft at Chetwyn Farms - our newly converted 1800s barn, where this small intimate group will work in an open, airy space. Workshop includes coffee/tea and a light vegetarian lunch. Watch alpacas in the nearby pastures from the floor to ceiling windows in the studio space. There is no refund or reduction in the fee for missed classes or cancellations.You are welcome to pass along your paid workshop space to a friend.