Alison Holt is a textile artist that practices fine art embroidery.

She makes pieces

that involve freehand and hand embroidery based on fine art which showcase
natural scenery or flowers. Alison takes inspiration from her surroundings and the
traditional plants that are native to England especially from the picture that she
has taken from places she has visited and is fond of. She would take pictures from
the places she has been and the use them as the inspiration of her pieces and
then proceed to take more pictures to create background for her pieces. This
leads me to think that her main inspiration is the gardens that make The English
countryside because her pieces showcase traditional plants that are seen locally.

Alison starts making her piece by first taking pictures of the inspiration of the
piece, using silk painting she then outlines the features of her chosen background
which matches the main element of her piece. After silk painting she would either
use hand embroidery or free-hand embroidery which brings the piece to life as it
gives the piece a bit of character and detail. From what I see, Alison uses a lot of
earthy-toned threads and subtle colours for her pieces which adds to the earthy
aura that Alison strives to have in her pieces. After using earth-toned silk paints
she uses coloured threads that compliment the colours of the silk paints which
contribute to the whole fine art embroidery objective.

I am intrigued by Alison Holt’s work as it is realistic, her work is

a duplicate of the pictures she takes as she is able to pay so
much attention to detail when it comes to the sights she sees
which make her work so ethereal. Her work fits so well with her
target market which makes her commercially viable towards the
western world as her work showcases scenery that is only
native in the west. Components such as using silk painting as a
way to outline the features of the background before using
embroidery to tie it all together add to her ‘fine-art’ objective. I
most definitely will be taking inspiration from Alison as she will
inspire me to use a painted background for my embroidery
pieces, as well as using the two types of embroidery (free-hand
and hand) to create harmony in the piece. However, instead of
using silk painting which would only limit me to only using silk I
would try using brushos therefore I could use any fabric for my
back-ground.
For this piece the inspiration seems to be the areas she is used to seeing as it
seems to captured locally. At first sight you can tell that the main focus of the
piece is the left-hand side as most of the flowers seem to be appearing from that
side. The setup seems to look like it could be from a garden in one’s home or
taken from a local park with flower beds. The piece seems to be extremely
diverse as it showcases three different flowers: daffodils, tulips and flowers that
could possibly be hydrangeas. She uses a layered effect to place all those flowers
together and with the help of long-stemmed grass she is able to conceal some
parts of the layers which makes it more organized.

In my opinion I think the strength of this piece is the layered technique she has
used, which allows us to also see the dyed background as well. The positions that
she has placed the flowers allows the piece to look dramatic making the piece
more striking. Another strength of this piece would be the bold colours used
amidst the earth-toned back-ground and components which uplifts the dullness
the piece would have if she sticked to an earth-toned palette. On the other hand
the layering effect could also be a weakness for this piece as some of the flowers
such as the daffodils are hidden in the background which is a bit frustrating
because it would have be beautiful to see them in lime-light.

I would reproduce this piece by starting off with the background

using the same technique she uses for her back-ground,
however, instead of sticking to silk paints which would only be
fitting for silk I would use brushos therefore I can investigate
using different fabric. By using brushos I will be able to create a
background that is light and airy but a bit distorted. After
finishing the back-ground I would move on to the main element
of the piece, the embroidery, by which I would use free-hand
embroidery with the help of earth-toned threads to achieve a
realistic look when it comes to the flowers. By doing all of the
following, I think I will be able to achieve the realistic/ fin-art
objective that Alison strives to have in her work as well as
diversifying her work by using other fabrics other than silk. I
believe this piece could be further developed if it involved other
dyeing methods such as batik and other textiles such as reverse
applique.