In the run-up to Christmas, Spurtle is highlighting work by artists and crafters who create or exhibit locally.
You may be tempted to buy their work now for a friend, or to commission an original piece in the new year. Either way, you'd be helping keep Broughton's creative flame alight in the chilliest midst of a very dark winter.
Kenris MacLeod is a Spurtleshire-based textile artist and freehand machine embroiderer.
She draws inspiration from the natural world, spending a lot of time in the Botanics preparing sketches for her dreamlike yet detailed works in fabric. Pictured right are her wonderfully mobile and convivial 'Summer Birches'.
As well as organic forms, MacLeod's work is strongly influenced by fairytales. Below is a piece called 'Big Red, Little Red': a characteristic mix of simplicity and complexity, oddity, affection and mischief.
MacLeod's pieces come in all sizes – from very small to very large – and, whilst they are mainly framed, she fashions some as cushions. You can see more of her work on Facebook.
Her images are hard to pin down: simple at one level, knowingly perceptive at another. The triptych 'Through a Starry Night' (below) exemplifies this approach. On the one hand, it has the awestruck innocence of a traditional Nativity scene, but on the other it suggests a postmodern nostalgia for – and critical distance from – the distortions of celluloid and linear storytelling.
Heartfelt but unsentimental, beautifully worked and thoughtfully nuanced ... MacLeod's work successfully negotiates multiple tightropes of her own invention.
