Featured Artist - December 2010
Bethan Ash
Cardiff, South Wales, UK
[email protected] 
www.bethanash.co.uk
After studying fashion and textile design at Art College in the 1960’s, I specialised and graduated with a fellowship in shoe design before embarking on a career as a designer in the fashion industry.
Following the birth of my son in the late ‘70’s I became interested in quilt-making and consequently been producing art quilts since the 1980's.
I believe that 'Colour is the subject matter of quilt-making' and this is shown in my work which vibrates in colourful abstract and geometric shapes, of clean, crisp, lines’.
When making each new piece I always search for a sense of movement, harmony and balance, the surface techniques I use, range in approach, from computer-manipulated imagery and fused collage to painting and text.
I am strongly influenced by social and popular culture and I focus on things that most of us can relate to, such as consumer goods, the environment, popular culture and dieting. I am also drawn to universal issues and values, levels of consumption of natural resources, food and material possessions - all of which are indicators of a society's status and value.
I make art quilts because I have a deep respect and love for their history as a vehicle for personal expression and believe that they are tactile evidence that we were here and left something of value 'as a mirror of ourselves and accomplishments'. It is meaningful to me that quilt-making is a woman's art and heritage and that I am but one link in a tradition chain of women expressing their opinions and feelings in cloth, needle and thread.
| Urban Landscape 91cm x 144cm, 2008 |
Down South 141 x 102cm, 2008 |
Real Artists Don’t Make Textiles 80 x 104 cm, 1997 |
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