Longwood #22, Detail
Longwood #22, detail mohair/wool mix
Ed 1 of 3
Weavers: Treasure Zulu, Tracy Thiba, Mummcy Mudau
Cartoon development & direction: Christine Weavind
2.20m x 1.45
Longwood Study was inspired by trees in the forest surrounding Graeme’s farmhouse in Yorkshire, through which he walks daily, observing the effects of light, weather and the changing seasons on his subjects.
As with all of his paintings, it is a composite rather than a portrait of a particular species or individual tree, and designed to recreate the feeling of being in nature. ‘When I close my eyes, what do I remember of the tree I just saw?’ he says, explaining his process. ‘Which are the textures and colours that stand out? In this way, I’m able to achieve a more interesting interpretation.’
After isolating the form of a branch or trunk, each piece begins with a pencil and charcoal study on raw canvas, to which he adds washes of diluted oil paint with a brush, switching to a palette knife for his final layer of colour.
Longwood was the first of Graeme’s paintings to be turned into a tapestry and “a big learning curve for us all,” says Christine. “I struggled to develop a cartoon that would translate into a tapestry with sufficient texture and shading.”
To better reenact the light-play integral to the original painting, she chose to intensify certain brights and darks.
“The first two iterations felt flat and lifeless. I must have started and rejected it about six times, and my weavers wanted to resign. But it turned out amazing and we ended up having a fat laugh about it. My weavers are extraordinary.”
Bosco Blue II, Detail
Bosco Blue II, detail mohair/wool mix
Ed 1 of 3
Weavers: Treasure Zulu, Tibenele Vilikati, Tracy Thiba
Cartoon development: Christine Weavind
2.55m x 1.30m
In his work, Graeme will often enlarge or reduce areas of a painting in order to discover new compositions. This tapestry is a detail of the quadtych painting Bosco II. “I thought an intense close up would add drama to the tapestry,” he says. “I added shades of moonlight blue to give a nocturnal poetry.”
Christine created the form and textural weight of the trunks with soft beige, granite and ivory.
Abstract but half recognisable, the tapestry relays the essence of a forest at night: the gathering dusk, the sensory disorientation we experience in the woods and a cool, otherworldly beauty teeming with unseen numinous forces.
Bosco II
Bosco II: Yorkshire mohair/wool mix
Ed 1 of 3
Weavers: Treasure Zulu, Tracy Thiba, Tibenele Vilikati, Rhoda Sori
Cartoon development & direction: Christine Weavind
3.15m x 2m
The Bosco tapestries are based on black-and-white studies of the leafless sections of trunk and branch that are visible between the sash bars of the windows inside Graeme’s 18th-century Yorkshire home during winter.
“You’re never seeing the tree completely,’ he explains. ‘It’s split up, dissected. It began as an exercise: four bits of paper to represent the panes, tracing the stark shapes of the branches and the way they moved around the composition – and just black oil paint on raw canvas or ink on paper.”
Working in black and white was a transformative experience: “When you take away colour, you have to create form in a different way,” Graeme says. “Black and white intensifies form, and the way light and dark play out across the trunks. You see much more clearly how they differentiate from one or other. That no tree trunk is the same.”
This quadtych began as a study in ink of four intersecting trees. Graeme used various sizes of paint brush to render texture and light, particularly sunlight bleaching out the bark’s detail in certain areas.
Developing the cartoon took several months. While there were considerably fewer colours than in Longwood, the detail needed to be specific and weaving absolutely accurate, though “by then, we had a better idea of how to get the effect I wanted,” says Christine. Her interpretation imbued the final piece with an air of solidity, suggestive of established trees, saturated with the centuries.
Bosco III
Bosco III: Yorkshire mohair/wool/linen mix
Ed 1 of 3
Weavers: Mummcy Mudau, Treasure Zulu, Tracy Thiba, Tibenele Vilikati
Cartoon development: Christine Weavind
2.75m x 1.75m
Bosco III began life as six sepia ink drawings on thick watercolour paper. Graeme conceived of the polyptych as a single piece – the trees’ knotted, gnarly, crisscrossing boughs evoked in fine strokes and watery stains.
While other paintings in the Bosco series were made with black Indian ink, here sepia created an intentionally softer, airy feel. Buttermilk, tangerine and lemon hues enhance that mood, lending the drawings a delicate, poetic balance.
“This tapestry is like a watercolour, soft and beautiful,” says Christine. “Each branch has a slightly different texture – the shades on the very left were softer than all of the others, for example.” Her interpretation introduced additional grey tones, giving the finished tapestry a unique feel.
Part of the concept for the piece was to emulate the ‘deckle’ edges of the original watercolour paper. Mimicking the effect of multiple sheets joined together created tiny openings that had to be stitched post weave.
A symphony of aqueous earth tones, the finished piece is ethereal in feel, evoking the kind of forest that lies beyond the ordered world.
