Debbie Lee graduated from the Glasgow School of Art in 1992 and began her career as a woven textile designer and a designer of outdoor clothing. It wasn’t until she had her children and moved to the far north of Scotland, to Caithness, that she began to make art to show. Initially her landscapes were painted, but she quickly returned to her primary love of textiles and began making mixed media stitched collage work for the wall.
Debbie’s art is a personal response to the landscapes of her surroundings, that she has visited and formed a connection with. She is not only inspired by the observation of the landscape and its beauty, but being there and experiencing it with the people she loves; family friends and her dogs. In this way each piece represents not just an image of the landscape as she sees it, but a point in time that she has spent there, representing an emotional quality tied to that time.
Debbie’s work is created through the collage of fabric and paper, then a layering of translucent fabric and machine stitch is added. It is then cut into to reveal earlier layers and is finally embellished with hand stitch.
Each of Debbie’s pieces are developed from line drawings of the landscape. The drawings are always in black and white, with line being the key element used to portray movement and depth. It’s this line element that comes through in the stitching of the final work, carrying the same ‘hand-writing’ as the original drawings. The final work is full of colour and pattern and, she hopes, her joy of the landscape it depicts.
