Becky Long-Smith
Becky works as an artist, visual story-teller and educator. Her multi-disciplinary practice most often involves print and collage. In 2022 Becky returned to education to study an MA in Creative Practice, which significantly changed the focus and direction of her work. She explores the themes of ritual, play, wonder, perceptions of reality and imagined narratives through her practice. The starting point for much of her work is natural phenomena and the complex human relationship with nature. Becky believes in making art accessible and relatable. One of the reasons she integrates techniques such as embroidery, where the care and time taken are self-evident, is to provide audiences with an immediate understanding of process. She also describes this process as a personal ritual.
Becky Long-Smith
Becky works as an artist, visual story-teller and educator. Her multi-disciplinary practice most often involves print and collage. In 2022 Becky returned to education to study an MA in Creative Practice, which significantly changed the focus and direction of her work. She explores the themes of ritual, play, wonder, perceptions of reality and imagined narratives through her practice. The starting point for much of her work is natural phenomena and the complex human relationship with nature. Becky believes in making art accessible and relatable. One of the reasons she integrates techniques such as embroidery, where the care and time taken are self-evident, is to provide audiences with an immediate understanding of process. She also describes this process as a personal ritual.
Rewoven rainbow
Lino print and hand embroidery on paper
60cm x 60cm
The title, rewoven rainbow refers to a passage from the poem, Lamia by John Keats (1820). Keats expressed sadness at what he felt was the reduction of natural wonder to cold facts. A rainbow, no-longer a goddess but refracted light entering the retina.
‘…Conquer all mysteries by rule and line, Empty the haunted air, and gnomed mine - Unweave a rainbow…’
Human perception is, in this case, more than the individual’s visual experience - it is the body’s chemical and emotional responses to what one sees. To perceive a rainbow we must first separate light into its component parts but it is only through the interweaving of these ‘visual components’ with knowledge, memories and emotions that we truly perceive anything at all.
