Gillian has woven art and furnishing tapestries since the mid 1970s, and continues to explore appropriate uses for this ancient, and satisfyingly tactile, technique. It’s been suggested that over the millennia humans first needed to create mathematics (i.e. counting beyond our ten fingers) in order to calculate the multiple warp and weft threads needed for making a textile on a loom.  

 

Basically a punk weaver (not trained in the fierce discipline of the great tapestry workshops), Gillian ensures that there’s a good reason for producing the resulting work as a tapestry, rather than a painting or sculpture - following the great European 16th and 17th centuries’ traditions.