Linda Green is an internationally recognised textile artist who has exhibited in Japan, USA and widely in Britain. She studied Tapestry at Edinburgh College of Art and Textiles at the Royal College of Art, London and has developed specialist expertise in Constructed Textiles and Papermaking. After a full time teaching career at Glasgow School of Art, she pursues her Creative practice in Edinburgh, founding Studio Green in 2009. Linda is member of the Crafts Council Hothouse Mentoring Scheme.
Linda’s work has been recognised through major awards from Creative Scotland, The Inches Carr Trust and Theo Moorman Trust for Weavers. In 2015 Linda was awarded the European Tapestry Forum Jury’s Prize for innovative work and this year sits on the International Jury for their fifth triennial exhibition, ArtTapestry5. Linda was an invited artist in Visual Arts Scotland 2016 Exhibition FLY.
The two artworks submitted to this exhibition represent the beginning of her response to an extensive period of research into linen.
The Working of Cloth
Allied with Our Linen Stories 2018, this work was displayed in three Scottish venues, showing in Leith, Selkirk and Newtonmore.
“As a volunteer gardener near Duddingston Loch in Edinburgh I was intrigued to find that Duddingston had been a weaving village which in times past produced a rough cloth known as Duddingston Hardings. I was curious to find out more about this fabric and discovered that it was linen made from local flax which was retted in the loch, before being spun into a utility fabric.
Inspired by the above, I began to parallel this process by engaging in the a natural cycle of plant growth, growing a crop of linen, harvesting its fibres, understanding how it is then processed into a thread and finally learning how to weave fine cloth. This process took time and provided me with deep insight into the nature of the material that I hoped would inform my creative process.
It would not have been possible to undertake the above research without the assistance and support of the following over a five year period:
Support from the Theo Moorman Trust enabled me to explore the historical production of local linen production; Initial support from Creative Scotland to study microscopic plant forms and gain access to a team of botanists and scientists; The Inches Carr Craft Bursary enabled me to explore the relationship between the structure of the plants and the structure of weave, an exploration was conducted through drawing, repetition and numerical sequencing. The foregoing was then developed with a major artist’s award from Creative Scotland which enabled me to synthesise much of the above coupled to new weaving skills and a study of the performance and behaviour of material. This laid a solid foundation for a new direction in the field of constructed textiles.
I am now in the fortunate position to reflect on this wealth of experience and new information which has had a profound impact on my creative practice. My two exhibits offer an early insight into this direction.”
Linda Green, May 2018
