East of the Sun, West of the Moon
My largest project to date was a 3 month long endeavour, illustrating the folktale “East of the Sun, West of the Moon”- a female protagonist Norwegian folktale in which a young girl sets out on a journey to rescue the man she has fallen in love with and release him from a curse.
This piece is large scale quilt measuring approximately 2 x 2 metres. The female focus of the narrative pays tribute to the deeply rooted history of quilting as a women’s craft, means of socialising, communicating and even protesting. Characters have been anthropomophised to add expression and emotion within the illustration, for example the sun and moon, winds and bear character. The entire work functions as a sort of map, with the entirety of the story unfolding quite literally east of the sun and west of the moon while sun and moon characters watch over from opposite sides of the piece.
Most recently exhibited with The Edinburgh Gallery Society in their 2023 Winter Exhibition, ‘Pursuit’, January 2023.