Roxanne Lasky and the Tide of Movement

Illustration: Roxanne Lasky. Migration. Hireath

So many creative individuals come to work with textiles, some briefly integrating the discipline within their larger mixed media work, others looking for some significance that they feel that textiles can bring them. Artists can drift into textiles through seeming coincidence, others with a more defined purpose. 

Fine artists in particular often seem drawn to textiles as a medium in which they feel comfortable. It seems to give them a means in which to express themselves more clearly, more empathically, it gives them a subtlety of colour and texture, and perhaps more importantly, it gives them a means to express themselves emotionally.

Illustration: Roxanne Lasky. Tidal 1

Illustration: Roxanne Lasky. Tidal 1 (detail)

The artist Roxanne Lasky came to textile art through fine art painting, she originally expressed herself through watercolour and oils. It is not hard to see elements of that fine art discipline in Roxanne's work, she has a light painterly touch to her compositions. However, it would be a mistake to see this artist as doing nothing more than replicating the early work she produced in paint, within textiles.

Roxanne has grown as a creative artist, as all artists must. She has learnt to understand and to appreciate both the limitations, as well as the freedoms that textiles can give to her as an artist. It is a discipline that can be complex, as well as simplistic. It has many layers of process, often literally, and these layers of process guide the exploration of the artist, they create parameters for work, narrative, and composition.

Illustration: Roxanne Lasky. Tidal 3

Illustration: Roxanne Lasky. Tidal 3 (detail)

Parameters are always useful to an artist. We talk a lot about the intellectual and creative freedom of an artist, and of course that is of paramount importance, but disciplines have their own rules, understandings, and limitations, and as an artist you can either fight against those seeming constraints, or you can flow with them, allowing them to cushion and guide your creative pathway.

Personal narrative is a driving force in Roxanne's work. Personal experience influences, colours, and reflects within her compositions, they emerge if you like, from the life of the artist. Roxanne is very much involved with the themes of place, cycles, movement, transformation, and migration. 

Illustration: Roxanne Lasky. Tidal 4

Illustration: Roxanne Lasky. Tidal 4 (detail)

Her work runs on major titled themes such as Tidal, Migration, Memory. These themes can easily be seen as belonging to the larger external world, the world of environment, and our place within it, and to an extent they are. However, Roxanne equally deals with these subject titles as an internal exploration and expression, and this is perhaps the most interesting aspect of her work, as it is where we all sit, internally looking out at the external.

Externally, we seem caught up in the web of life, trapped in the constraints of movement and cycles that are not necessarily of our choosing. However, internally our lives seem governed by our own sense of place, cycle, migration. We travel along the paths of our own purpose, often repeating elements of ourselves, travelling in circles and cycles of meaning that suit us. We are part of a tide of movement, not through the physical world, but through the world of our own meaning, our own perception. 

Illustration: Roxanne Lasky. 27 Stages (detail)

Illustration: Roxanne Lasky. 12 Moons (detail)

Perception is our tool of individuality, and individual perception is the most significant work tool of the artist. Roxanne's creative themes are her personal themes, they are her personal perspective. Her compositions are the product of her practical working process, as well as her deep internal process. Both drive the other along their twin paths towards completion, both are of equal significance, both are needed to complete the creative work, and both give us the continuing expression of the artist Roxanne Lasky.

More of Roxanne's work can be found at her website: www.roxannelasky.com, as well as at the social media sites of: twitter, facebook, instagram, pinterest.

All of the imagery used for this article was kindly supplied by the artist herself, and is therefore copyrighted to her. Please do not reuse the imagery unless you have permission from Roxanne herself.

Illustration: Roxanne Lasky. Tidal 2