Fabric Paintings

Chris Roberts-Antieau began her career in art by walking out of an art class.
On her very first day in art-school, the instructor had given the class an assignment to draw an ink bottle. The other students drew literal, realistic sketches. Chris drew a blocky, childlike bottle that took up the whole page. The professor singled it out for mockery in front of the whole class, asking her, "Who told you you could draw?" Chris walked out and never looked back.
To create her fabric paintings, Chris hunts through old five-and-dimes and tiny country quilt shops to collect a palette of fabrics: linens, flannels, cottons, calicos even velvet. Back in her studio in the Michigan woodlands, she cuts her designs freehand, then uses the sewing machine as a drawing tool to define the borders of her figures with a beautiful, almost invisible satin-stitch. She finishes her pieces with hand- embroidery work, and frames the finished art behind glass in hand-painted frames.