Trot to be held March 24
The Tryon Gallery Trot season kicks off on March 24 as Kathleen’s Gallery features the painted silks of Tryon artist Barbara Tilly.
Barbara Tilly is a fiber artist who creates hand-painted silk scarves, wall hangings, handbags, and other textile art using silk painting, batik, gutta serti, and other techniques.
Primarily a self-taught artist, Tilly said she is interested in color and texture and loves following the process to let the designs develop.
“I don’t usually start a scarf or other piece with a destination in mind,” Tilly said. “ I just start putting colors on fabric and keep doing that in various ways until the piece tells me it’s done.”
Tilly said she has always loved working with fabrics.
“My mother was an expert seamstress – a tailor, really – and she taught me to sew when I was young,” she says.
Because of her sewing experience, quilting was Tilly’s first step in her search for a textile art form more than 20 years ago. She soon realized that she enjoyed only the design and initial piecing stages of quilting; the quilting itself took too long without enough creativity in the process, she said.
Silk painting – painting with dyes directly on silk (or other fabrics) – was a revelation for Tilly. There are virtually no limits on color, an infinite variety of techniques can be used, and the process itself is freely adaptable.