Margaret Robbie

I studied graphic design as part of initial teacher training and have since had artistic endeavour of one kind or another at the centre of my life. I cannot imagine life without it.  

My recent work has centred mainly on the abstraction and development of images from my own photographs into which I stitch in some form, sometimes directly onto the photographic paper. I also make occasional artist’s books and weavings.

The particular reference in my work is to landscape through an exploration of the influence of man-made pattern, structure and form on the natural and (in much of this work) on the urban environment. Experiences when travelling have led me especially to consider recently the effects - good or otherwise - of modern European civilisation on the lives of First Peoples as development takes place.  

This work has developed particularly from travels to South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, and Western Canada. When I am travelling, I take a huge number of photographs of things that catch my eye, and especially of those which seem to offer possibilities for abstraction and development. Often, though, I have no idea as I photograph where developments may take me. The process seems to have a mind of its own.

I post from time to time on Instagram (as charlton_stitcher) and also have a blog, http://charltonstitcher.blogspot.co.uk/ where I post regularly about my work. The latter reaches a surprisingly far-flung audience. In my posts, I focus especially on process and on those things in the everyday which interest and inspire me.

These pieces are part of a series of work based on photgraphs of a tented theatre space in Queensland Australia, exploring the contrasting effects on the landscape of the Aboriginal peoples and that of 19th and 20th century settlers.

And these are part of a series based on photographs of high rise buildings in Vancouver, Canada, where I made allusion to the too often damaging effects of European settlers on the lives of the First Nation peoples.