Valerie O' Regan
Valerie O' Regan is a multi-disciplined artist based on the South Cowal peninsula of Western Scotland. Here Valerie is surrounded by rugged coastline and wild woodlands, and her art is inspired by these ancient landscapes traced and tracked with shifting markers of past and present lives.
Valerie uses a range of techniques in her artwork, honed over 25 years of experimenting, learning and collaborating. Working with other fellow artists enriches her perspective, motivating her to engage in projects that are both reflective and impactful.
Valerie's Pieces for Forgotten Fleece Tales
Threading Land is a textile wall hanging that weaves together stories like a living carpet. Using wet and needle felting techniques, it features waste raw fleece sourced from locally-farmed sheep in Glen Massan. The piece incorporates toned cyanotype prints of local flora on cotton fabric, which have been bleached and then toned with natural pigments extracted from native plants including Herb Robert, Cranes-Bill, and Rosebay Willowherb. The raw fleece and cyanotypes intertwine, creating a visual and tactile symbiosis that captures the essence of the land and its flora.
Vertical Seascape is a textile wall hanging inspired by the mark-making traditions found in cartographic representations. This piece uses printed hessian as a base, echoing the symbolic language of map keys. The textile incorporates raw fleece from Glen Massan with dried seaweed, evoking the textures and forms of the seascape of the Cowal peninsula. The fleece is entwined with the Hessian through needle and wet felting processes, hand-dyed with natural pigments derived from nettle, coreopsis, and iron water. These elements come together, symbolically, and physically, to bind the land and sea.
