G R A E M E B L A C K
TAPESTRY
NYC 2024
Longwood Study, Yorkshire (2024) 200 cm x 160 cm South African mohair and cotton In 2023 Graeme Black invited the Stephens Tapestry studio in South Africa to create a hand-woven piece based on the large-scale, close-up paintings of bark that are the focus of his practice. Five experts in weaving helped translate the painting to tapestry, using around 300 subtly- dyed shades in plain and melange yarns to evoke each brushstroke and knife scrape.
Longwood 20/21/22 /23, Yorkshire (2021) Longwood Study was inspired by trees in the forest surrounding Graeme’s farmhouse in Yorkshire, through which he walks daily, observing the effects of light, weather and the changing seasons on his subjects, transmitting in thousands of tiny daubs the shifting colours and texture of the bark. As with all of his paintings, Longwood Study is a composite rather than a portrait of a particular species or individual tree, and designed to recreate the feeling of being in nature. ‘When I close my eyes, what do I remember of the tree I just saw?’ he says, explaining his process. ‘Which are the textures and colours that stand out? In this way, I’m able to achieve a more interesting interpretation.’ He prefers to work in large scale, believing that the sense of freedom and the energy that goes into each piece is captured in its final form. After isolating the form of a branch or trunk, each piece begins with a pencil and charcoal study on raw canvas, to which he adds washes of diluted oil paint with a brush, switching to a palette knife for his final layer of colour.
The possibilities generated by partnering with other creatives, whereby one artist interprets the work of another, has great appeal for Graeme and reflects the collaborative nature of the fashion industry in which he built his career. Born in Angus, on the eastern coast of Scotland, he graduated in fashion from Edinburgh College of Art in 1989, and until 2016 worked as creative director for brands including Salvatore Ferragamo and Giorgio Armani. It was while restoring his Grade II listed Regency lodge and regenerating its 350 acres of farmland and forest in Yorkshire, that he rediscovered his talent for painting. The former cowshed – since waterproofed, whitewashed and heated – is now his studio. Since that time, he has exhibited at Messums Gallery, Yorkshire and at Silas Marder Gallery in Bridgehampton, New York. An exhibition in Milan in 2023, meanwhile, placed his paintings in close dialogue with pieces by the Italian glassmaker Michela Cattai. That same year, Graeme and his partner, the interior designer Jonathan Reed, also opened an exhibition space and creative hub in one of the former outbuildings on the farm site. Thorns Gallery is named for the original farm. For its inaugural show, Graeme exhibited a series of black and white studies of the dissected sections of trunk and branch that are visible through the window panes of his home. G R A E M E B L A C K
Photo by Beth Evans
The tapestry design For the tapestry, Graeme isolated a small section of the original painting evoking the crisscross of boughs in abstract form. Working from a photograph maquette, Stephens Tapestry Studio enlarged the chosen image in order to map the precise colour of each brushstroke.
Stephens tapestry company studio
Longwood Study was made by Stephens Tapestry Studio in Johannesburg, South Africa. The Studio has been producing pieces in collaboration with artists for more than half a century, many of which now hang in museums and private art collections. Founded in 1949 in the mountains of northern Swaziland (now Eswatini), by Coral Stephens, the
Studio is run today by her granddaughter, Christine Weavind. Coral was taught to weave by Sylvia Mantanga, a Xhosa who had learned the art from Swedish missionaries in the Eastern Cape province. Before long, Coral’s bespoke and avant-garde fabrics caught the eye of the noted American designer Jack Lenor Larsen, with whom she developed a range that sold to theatres and homes in the USA. The Studio began making artworks in the 1960s, after Coral persuaded the South African artist Cecil Skotnes that one of his wood blocks would translate beautifully to tapestry. Her daughter Marguerite made the piece and soon began working with other artists, including William Kentridge. In 1965, the arm of the Studio producing artworks moved its workshop to Diepsloot, a suburb of Johannesburg, though the raw mohair for which the Studio is renowned – a tough luxurious fibre produced by angora goats farmed in the Eastern Cape as well as neighbouring Lesotho – is still spun, carded and dyed in the Eswatini mountains by a team of local women between 24 and 65 years old. Some smaller pieces are also made there, overseen by a weaver whose grandmother worked for Coral.
Cartoon and dyeing It took 10 weeks and two false starts on the loom to produce a cartoon that evoked the shimmering effect of the original painting. To better reenact the light-play that is integral to Graeme’s work, Christine chose to amplify certain brights and darks. Using a full-size colour print of the maquette, each colour was matched, mapped on an acetate overlay, and then assigned a number – there are nearly 300 in all. ‘It was a very intense process,’ says Christine, ‘but exciting for me too. To get the texture and the sense of shadow and light I had to think in a whole new way.’
Weaving The weft of the tapestry – the thread woven left to right through vertical threads on the loom – is principally the sheeny, rich mohair that is the Stephens Studio’s signature. Christine also selected a thick, rope-like cotton to suggest the bark’s ridges and crinkles. Created on the type of upright scaffold loom used by the historic Gobelin manufactory of Paris, the intricately patterned design took six months to complete, with three weavers twisting and knotting side by side with a dexterity that Kentridge once compared to that of a harp player.
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