Eileen Harrisson uses a range of materials and tactics; paint, print, stitch - to create unusual works that occupy the borderlands of the impressionistic and the abstract, with the tangibility of fabric alchemically conveying the shimmering play of light. The works remind one of the stormy imaginations of the best children’s books, come to life and made tactile, especially those moments when all is most charged, magical, mysterious and tentative, but a core of hopefulness runs through.

Eileen Harrisson's work is held in private collections in the UK and abroad, including that of collector and philanthropist Roberta Ahmanson, USA.

“Engaged with both the aesthetics of materiality and flow of the spirit, my work revolves around an exploration of the emotive power of colour and expressive line through paint, print and stitch. Embroideries, reworked in Photoshop and inkjet printed, hold up the interplay of patterns in nature as a mirror to the drama of struggling humanity, networks of hand stitch and layers of opaque and transparent painted fabrics seeking to express the ineffable through the tactile sensitivity of fabric and thread.

Inspired by light and landscape with the leitmotif of the sea, the mixed media textile images move through Impressionism to a more abstract sensibility, a transposition of the interaction between nature and the self, between the natural world as experienced through the prism of the senses and the mind, and as perceived through the lens of the soul. Now also exploring the link between sight and sound, between colour as visual entity and as embodiment of a musical key, my work offers the viewer a place of meditation, an invitation to experience art through fabric and stitch, to contemplate possibilities beyond perceived reality or a space in which, simply, to be. Wind of the spirit blows through all and informs all.”