The present work explores Feminine Beauty and Fashion through “mining” my personal history amongst other source materials. By collecting and combining remembrances of feelings and occurrences, physical documents and materials, I weave a narrative “cloth” linking childhood to the present. The ‘paisley’ motif becomes a metaphor for my own migration. Its evolution, symbolic of mine as a ‘hybridized’ Sri Lankan Canadian. The sewing “toolbox” of measuring tape, pins, buttons, bobbins and fasteners, are re-purposed in the works and also act as metaphor. Within the sewing process a tissue paper pattern is used and discarded. Here it is re-purposed, its transparency and fragility signifying a transitory state. The shapes of the patterns, combined with overlaid imagery allude to the absent body, one that exists in memory.

The Artist as embodied through a “dress” is now feminine subject and object of the artwork. The fashion presented is homespun, often iconic, the female identity presented as a piecing together of events and memory, the gaze inward, the beauty residing in the self-revelation.

Read Gil McElroy’s Article “Freeing the Figure” in Re:Sculpt Magazine

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