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Contemporary
Fiber Arts - Archie Brennan Bio
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ARCHIE BRENNAN World Renowned Tapestry Artist |
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Archie Brennan has been an internationally known master tapestry artist for more than 40 years, often credited with the revival of tapestry in the 20th century. He was born and educated in Scotland. After a six year apprenticeship at Dovecot Studios in Edinburg, he traveled and studied in France for two years and then returned to Scotland where he completed graduate and post-graduate studies at Edinburgh College of Art, where he set up a department of tapestry in 1962. Since 1962 to the present, Brennan has lectured about and conducted tapestry workshops at universities, state and national arts and crafts institutes and museums in the United Kingdom, Europe, Canada, United States, Australia, New Zealand and New Guinea. He has been the chairman of the British Craft Centre, president of the Society of Scottish artists and artistic director of the Edinburgh Tapestry Dovecot Studios. He is a recipient of the Lord Mayor’s of London Award to Artists and an O.B.E., Appointed Officer of the British Empire by H.M. Queen Elizabeth II, for his contributions the arts. His work has been widely exhibited since the early 1960’s in museums and galleries in the British Isles, Australia, New Zealand and the United States and is held in major public and private collections in the United States and abroad. Over many years, Brennan has maintained several distinct avenues of exploration. The series AT A WINDOW continuing since 1967, always has strong textile references in a rich interior that only silently refers to the outside world. The woven word, alone or related to imagery, is another theme that has constantly recurred. There are tapestry postcards and packages that have been stamped and mailed around the world since 1973, ‘as is’, that is unwrapped and sent as they are. Some tapestries are purely decorative while others have strictly formal concerns. Then there are works that are at first glance superficially humorous but have biting social comment. Beneath them all is a continuous search to express a creative and very personal graphic language in woven drawing that is tapestry. A more recent avenue of exploration THE DRAWING SERIES unofficially had its beginning in 1988/89 when in "… Members of the Board" the characters originated from drawings made as routine sketchbook practice from the TV. He formally began the series in 1993 with "Black and White head – Rear". The DRAWING SERIES represents a departure from designing specifically for each tapestry. He starts with one of his drawings and then uses all or part of the drawing to create the tapestry, not exactly recreating the drawing but transforming it in tapestry terms. These tapestries are reconstructions, in tapestry terms, of his pre-existing drawings. The drawings where created over many decades, during a weekly session of, at least once a week, drawing from a live model. They were done as a learning practice and were not created directly for the purpose of being transformed into tapestries. He did not originally intend these drawings to be used in any way other than as drawing practice. Choosing from among a vast quantity of his pre-existing drawings he gives them new meanings by exploring and developing a vocabulary of mark making that is inherent in the tapestry process. There are effects in weaving that he does not get in the drawings. Technically in fact, if he wanted to, Brennan as the highly skilled weaver can imitate painting or drawing. But rather than simply imitate the drawings he explores the difference between the woven mark and the drawn mark and in the process has created a new language of ‘marks’ that still has its roots in existing characteristics of the drawings but have unexpected qualities that are unique to tapestry. In the process of weaving tapestry, one gets ‘steps’ rather than smooth curvilinear lines or forms in the shapes. This is inherent to the process itself but rather than concealing this effect, he uses it, working coarser. One may ask, why not just do the drawings. Why weave them? But they are not interchangeable. A major difference is that when drawing on paper the space between two lines is blank. When weaving, one has to weave the space between the two lines, it has texture and therefore shadows. It is positive not negative space as in drawing. His tapestries are not copies of his drawings, they are original works of art in and of themselves, albeit in another medium. They are created completely by the artist himself, combining the skilled weaver and the artist. There is no draftsman in between to interpret or translate the original work of art into the tapestry using a full scale cartoon to show the weavers what to do. In the ongoing DRAWING SERIES, Brennan has three styles of work, each of which is not necessarily exclusive of each other in some of the pieces. One is the sketch like style in which he makes use of shading effects such as would be seen when using charcoal or graphite, another is the linear or single line style and another could be called the Cubist-like style. Cubism style is the flattening of all dimensions to one plane and in weaving it emerges from the process itself of the vertical (warp) and horizontal (weft) lines. His latest series he calls RECONSTRUCTIONS. As Brennan writes in May 2006: "These tapestries are the outcome, to date, of an interesting experiment. I have been selecting details from medieval works, then weaving them as if I were a medieval weaver, but using my approach to tapestry making some 500 years later.
This approach has been provoked by my view that the medieval tapestry weaver had a far greater creative input in the character and development of such tapestries than is generally argued today by medieval scholars.
This is particularly evident in the intimate details of such mural scale tapestries of the 14th -16th century. It is these details as much as the overall concept that is the real return in the narrative and organization of such works." The strength of Brennan’s tapestries is the immense range of his artistry as well as his skill as a weaver. Brennan’s tapestries transcend the medium in which they are created. They are simply great works of art.
SELECTED EXHIBITIONS Since 1960 more than 90 exhibitions, including many international juried and invitational shows including some 15 solo exhibitions in Scotland, England, Australia, New Zealand and the USA. COLLECTIONS
AWARDS
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