From Fashion to Fine Art: How Textiles Found Their Way Into My Work
There are moments in your creative life when things suddenly seem to join up. Things that once felt like completely separate chapters turn out to have been connected all along.
That’s how I felt when I was invited to be part of ReSisters: Women, Craftivism, Art & Fashion, an exhibition at Elaine Foster-Gandey Art in Lostwithiel this September. Because before I became a full-time artist, I spent 20 years working in fashion and retail buying - including ten years within the surf industry.
For a long time, I thought becoming an artist marked the beginning of something completely new. Increasingly, I realise it didn't.
Finding my way back to textiles
Fabric and materials have always been part of my creative language. Even the surfboard fibreglass I first started using in my paintings has a quality similar to a thick woven fabric, and ultimately led me to explore other materials.
I studied Art & Design and Fashion before building my career in buying, where I spent years surrounded by fabrics, colour, texture, clothing and product. When I eventually returned to making art, I began with painting. But slowly, almost instinctively, textiles started finding their way back in.
Today, my seascapes are built through layers of mixed media and textiles. I use pieces of denim, vintage fabrics, lace and still the surfboard fibreglass offcuts that began this journey, to create the shapes and peaks of the waves, the movement of water and the textures of the shoreline.
But I've also become fascinated by what those materials can represent. A piece of fabric isn't always simply a material. It can remind us of a person. A period of our lives. Something we wore. Somewhere we went. Just like a particular stretch of coastline can instantly transport us back to a moment, textiles can hold memories too.
It's something I've been exploring increasingly within my work - and something I wrote about recently in Pieces of our lives: why I use fabrics in my paintings.
‘Woven into the Waves 1’ One of my latest pieces that will be part of the exhibition
Perhaps the different parts were never separate
The more my practice develops, the less interested I am in keeping creativity neatly inside individual boxes. I paint. I work with textiles and texture. I photograph the coastline and use those images as research. I've painted surfboards and clothing. I've designed products using my artwork. And through my creative experiences, I encourage other people to reconnect with their own creativity too.
For years I might have seen those as different things. Now I see them as different expressions of the same creative practice.
And perhaps those 20 years working in fashion weren't something I had to leave behind to become an artist. They were part of what brought me here.
Why ReSisters feels particularly special
That is why being invited to take part in ReSisters feels so fitting.
The exhibition celebrates women transforming textiles, fashion and art, bringing together artists and makers working across mixed media, textiles, reconstructed fashion, ceramics, jewellery, painting, printmaking and wearable art.
I'll be exhibiting my mixed-media work alongside women approaching materials and creativity in completely different ways.
I love that.
There is something incredibly exciting about seeing the boundaries between art, craft, fashion and design becoming less rigid - and celebrating the possibilities that appear when those worlds overlap.
It feels like exactly the right environment for my work at this point in my creative journey. And perhaps, in a funny way, a little bit like coming full circle.
Close up of my original painting ‘Beneath the Light’
Visit ReSisters in Lostwithiel
ReSisters: Women, Craftivism, Art & Fashion
Elaine Foster-Gandey Art
15 Queen Street, Lostwithiel, PL22 0AD
11–26 September 2026
The exhibition opens with a Private View on Friday 11 September from 5–8pm, including an Art & Fashion Procession through the streets of Lostwithiel at 6pm, followed by artist talks, drinks and nibbles back at the gallery.
I'll be there for the Private View and would love to see you.
And if you'd like to explore more about the role textiles, memories and place play within my paintings:
→ Read: Pieces of our lives — why I use fabrics in my paintings
→ Explore my original paintings
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