BEYOND THE GRID: Texture as a Point of Transition
This post explores my fascination with perspective, in-between spaces, and the role of texture in my work - texture, to me, being inseparable from colour. In my work, texture and colour do not simply coexist - they speak to each other. Colour gives texture its emotional resonance, while texture imparts depth and materiality to the colour, transforming it from a mere visual marker into something that can be touched, felt, and experienced on a visceral level.
Lately, I have been working on watercolour paintings, both as standalone pieces and as companions to my textile works. From the start of my practice, I have focused on the juxtaposition of multiple media to create an experience that mirrors the complexity and layered nature of a portrait. Never do I only see someone or something in 2D and most often, I see someone or something in an environment of different textures.
When I started dying (which we all do as soon as we are born) I did so because of the colouring. The painting aspect, and I actively pursued the dye in various densities in order to achieve various saturations from which I could build what appeared to be monochrome works but which when inspected intimately would reveal a broad range of colour nuances and textures that weren’t visible at a distance, but which in turn gave space for the grid structure. In my work, the grid becomes more than just a structural tool; it acts as a framework for perception itself. It speaks to the way we organize and navigate the world around us, both physically and mentally. What might initially appear as rigid order is, in reality, a fluid space for understanding the tension between the seen and the unseen.
The grid structure became more than just a historical concept for me; it became a means to explore spatial relationships in my own work. It allows me to dissect the layers of texture, colour, and form - often revealing what isn’t immediately visible. This was first fully developed during the Renaissance, a technique most famously attributed to the Italian architect and artist Filippo Brunelleschi, who demonstrated the principles of linear perspective in the early 15th century, around 1415. His method was further refined and popularized by artists such as Leonardo da Vinci and Albrecht Dürer. Brunelleschi's work in perspective was foundational in shaping how artists approached spatial relationships in their compositions.
Photo by © Camilla Howalt
IMAGE: Supposed portrait of Filippo Brunelleschi from 'Resurrection of the Son of Theophilus' by Masaccio
Of course, the grid had been spoon-fed to me through looking at my parents' work when drawing and thinking about dimensions in their architectural studies and later work. My parents, both architects, were among the first to introduce me to the world of dimensions and grids. Their work was never about the simple organization of space - it was about translating a conceptual vision into something tangible, into structures that were both functional and expressive. Their grids were frameworks for understanding the world in three dimensions, and as I engaged with their work, I began to see how my own art could speak to that complexity. While theirs were primarily functional, my grids are a means to explore texture, meaning, and the invisible forces that shape our perception of the world.
Their passion for transforming 2D into 3D constructions, with multiple juxtaposed materials, has always fascinated me. While their grids had a practical function to fulfill, mine evolved to focus more on texture and experience. Texture and the imaginary nature of touch is at the core of my own praxis, and I think of classical architecture where proportion and material was born out of the capacity of the individual mass of producing bodies. These textures might support each other, clash, or interrupt one another - creating a dynamic space within the grid. This is where gestures like suturing through stitching or making knots through quilting points become crucial. In many ways, quilting points mirror Lacan’s concept of the fragmented self. The quilting points, like Lacan’s notion of the fragmented self, act as the very fabric from which the ego is woven. These marks are both stitches in the literal sense and metaphors for identity—imperfect, incomplete, and in constant need of repair. In this process, the work becomes not just an object, but a continuous act of redefinition, where gaps and ruptures are stitched together in an ongoing search for coherence. Just as Lacan describes the ego as a construction of fragmented images, the quilting process is an act of stitching together what is broken or incomplete. Each stitch, each knot, becomes a marker of the self - creating a form of identity out of disparate parts. The quilting points are not just physical; they symbolize an ongoing effort to reconcile what is fragmented, to create a whole from what is inherently split. Lacan might argue that this act of stitching - this attempt to sew together - is an endless search for coherence, one that can never be fully achieved but remains the central act of self-definition.
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Texture, for me, goes beyond what is visually perceivable. It inhabits a deeper, almost tactile quality in my work, something that extends to the emotional experience of the viewer. It is the sense of touch that transcends the visual realm, inviting a multi-sensory engagement with the work. Just as the needle penetrates the fabric, the textures I create often seek to puncture the viewer’s expectations - sometimes softly, other times abrasively. This creates a tension within the space, a quiet dialogue between what is felt and what is seen.
The architectural perspective I engage with is not just about structure; it's a way to attack, penetrate, combine, interrupt, or transcend the space in-between. This space, as Arnold van Gennep, a French anthropologist of Dutch origin, put it, is liminality. The act of creating - just as much as the act of experiencing - is a liminal one. When I work, I am in the midst of transition, a state where the work is neither fully formed nor entirely absent. There is a constant dialogue between intention and intuition, control and surrender, certainty and doubt. This is the liminal space I occupy as an artist: the in-between, where my ideas and the materials themselves shift and evolve. The viewer, too, enters this space upon encountering the work, moving between what is known and what is perceived. This moment of transition is where the power of art lies - where it becomes both an expression and an invitation to exist in that space of ambiguity and potential.
Van Gennep coined the term in his 1909 work Les Rites de Passage, describing the transitional phase in rituals where individuals shift from one social state to another. Liminality is a state of ambiguity, existing between two phases, which mirrors my approach with materials - working with a needle, there is the front and back, but most notably, the invisible middle. This 'middle' space is where textures, forms, and meanings coexist, creating a point of transition that is as much about texture as it is about space. This middle zone, where boundaries blur, is not an absence but a space ripe with potential. It’s in this liminal area that the work moves beyond fixed meanings. It is a dynamic field, charged with tension, where meaning shifts and expands, leaving room for unexpected interpretations and emotional resonances. The invisible middle, this liminal space, is not merely an absence but a potential. It is where the boundaries blur between what is known and unknown, between what can be touched and what can only be imagined. Just as the grid holds the work together, the invisible middle - the quiet space between stitching or between grid lines - holds the meaning of the work. It's here that perception shifts, where one’s gaze falters, and a sense of uncertainty creeps in. It's a space where the work calls you in but never fully reveals itself. This space, like the ritual in van Gennep’s Rites de Passage, is about transformation, not completion. Just as shadows are not static but move with the light, the work itself becomes an interplay of presence and absence. It allows the viewer to step into a space that is both fully realized and yet always in flux, caught between what is known and what is unknowable
As I walked, the spring sun laid bare its first meagre rays, and I watched as my shadow moved in and out of the light, slipping between the sunny spots and the cool shadows. There was a seamlessness to it, an ebb and flow between existence and absence. In those fleeting moments, I saw the interplay between what was a reflection of my actual existence and not only absence of existence, my disappearance, and a kind of seamless (I like the pun on seam and less in this example as seam is the consequence of stitching) suturing of the two, presence and disappearance, and I thought of how shadows, like presences such as textures, can be both seen and felt. They are not tangible, but they carve out spaces for experiences in the world - areas that are in-between, neither fully visible nor fully absent. This is the ongoing area of the space within and between the grid’s lines, that occupies my mind, the perspective, the textures and the quilting points.
