During summer 2018 I ‘discovered’ a trove of fabric balls in an armoire in the studio of friends in Pyötsaari a tiny island in north-east Finland. Each ball is wound from old cloth (clothing, household fabrics etc) torn into strips to be woven into traditional rugs. Reminiscent of fat ripe peony buds each painting is a ‘portrait’ commemorating a single ball with the word elegy painted in the handwriting of Robert Motherwell. They stand as elegies to each strip of cloth and its previous life, now bound and wound up within each ball, and the script itself is a remnant from a previous work made in 1991 following the artist’s death.
