Sarah Roche – Oxfordshire Artweeks

322 Sarah Roche

Region: Woodstock – North & West

Artform: Textiles

Sarah is a talented Felt Artist, working intuitively with dyed Merino wool tops, nepps, natural Blue-faced Leicester curls and Mulberry silks to create dazzling variations of colour and definition in her landscapes, carefully layering the fibres to produce works at once extraordinarily delicate and durable.
Her inspiration came initially from the impossibly dramatic fells and hills of the Yorkshire Dales but continues to make itself felt through every landscape of which she has been a part. Over the last couple of years she has enjoyed reconnecting with the Oxfordshire landscape, becoming re-acquainted with its wide-reaching vistas, gentle light and rolling hills,and the shadows that play over the fields chasing the clouds across the landscape…
It’s well worth a closer look in order to appreciate that these artworks are indeed created with wool and uniquely wet-felted in a single process from start to finish, not embroidered, embellished or needle-felted – at first glance they are often mistaken for paintings.
Her art is tactile and vibrant, and through it she articulates her own, personal response to the natural she experiences around her. It seeks to reach out of the frame and pull the viewer into the landscape and the use of natural fibres conveys much more than just the view. Her pieces carry with them a visceral sense of place, how it feels to be standing within the landscape. They invite the viewer to be a part of it, to feel a connection with it. Much more than that they lend voice to a memory.