Julie Cockburn

Julie Cockburn is a 46 year old modern artist based in London whose work involves working on top of photographs either with sewing, painting or illustrations:

This photograph above is an example of her stitching into photographs. I think that this relates well to my chosen theme of fashion as the artist has made the stitching look like an elaborate head dress or a mask. I think that stitching is an interesting way to completely change a photograph. It started off by being a vintage portraiture photograph, and has become an interesting piece of artwork with intricate detailing. The bright colours at the side of the face draw your attention to it, but then your eyes notice the other softer colours and also notice the detailed pattern of the blush pink thread. 

The photograph itself is planned - a typical portrait photograph, but I also think that the threading was planned also. It looks too detailed and set out to be spontaneous. I think that the mask makes the photograph seem more modern, also because the photograph is in black and white. It could perhaps be referencing to a memory that she had of a particular piece for an event, for example, the mask reminds me of carnival mask. I think that the different colours in this photograph will remind people of something of that colour(s) in their own lives, which is interesting and shows that her work can influence others. The majority of the photograph is obstructed by the stitching, but it seems that the photograph is just a head shot portrait that was taken a while ago. I personally feel like there is too much thread work as you don't get to see the significance to the whole photograph. 

Overall, I personally like the technique and the idea behind stitching the photographs to enhance it, however I don't really like the overall outcome of it. If I were to stitch my own photographs, I would make the stitching much more subtle, so that the viewer had to look closely and carefully at it to notice the change in the image. I would also experiment with paler and softer colours to also make it look more subtle, but it would be interesting to try the same pattern with brighter and bolder colours to see how different they look.