Joanna Kinnersly-Taylor is a printed textile artist and designer based in Glasgow. Responding to daily life within the domestic interior, Joanna takes inspiration from small details of household objects through to larger architectural elements, exploring their interplay and juxtaposition. The window is a recurring motif, as a metaphor for a liminal state, as well as the effects of time and light, and how these change the sense of a place, revealing and concealing the fabric of our lives. Although the origin of chosen imagery is not necessarily overt, the abstraction process aims to imbue a quiet familiarity, capturing a moment, atmosphere, or environment.
Dyeing, painting, and screenprinting mostly on Belgian linen, the cloth surface is ‘carved out’ through the push and pull of repeatedly adding and then removing colour, to create positive and negative space. These multiple layers form a resonating surface – a personal landscape that constantly shifts – as well as creating impact whether close-up, where fine detail emerges, or from a distance when strong contrast and sheer depth of colour become apparent. The interleaving of shadow and light further this sense of an everchanging environment. The Still Series, featured in Tangled Up, aim to capture a sense of these moments within an interior space. Other elements, such as small-scale grid patterns and writing, are utilised as an ‘underlayer’ that reverberate through a piece, providing rhythm, and may be partially obscured, influencing the subsequent print layer.
Writing is specific to each work but deliberately illegible – the viewer can make their own meaning. It becomes embedded into the cloth in Untitled 1 (for Amanda), appearing as embroidery or even hair. In The Long Years it is printed as a negative – stripped out from the background, quiet and repetitive. Here Joanna documents the time spent waiting for the birth of her daughter. The utilitarian striped cloth – a vintage but pristine Irish linen roller towel that unfurled like a scroll – seemed a fitting surface on which to present this narrative.
Untitled 1 (for Amanda) and Untitled 2 take the form of bolster covers, their suspension creating movement and alteration to the composition. Open at each end, they embrace the ebb and flow of human emotion – grief, change and renewal.
Joanna studied at University College for the Creative Arts (Farnham) and Glasgow School of Art. She specialises in one-off works on linen – for exhibition, interiors, and site-specific commissions for public and private spaces – as well as having occasional forays into utilitarian textiles, which are more graphic in style. Working from her studio in Glasgow, Joanna’s mostly abstract works are inspired by the domestic landscape. Her printing style is underpinned by a rigorous sampling methodology – dyeing, painting and screen-printing – developing bespoke colour palettes for each project and building depth and transparency through a multi-layered approach.
Joanna is a member of the 62 Group of Textile Artists and has been featured in several books and magazines. She is the author of ‘Dyeing and Screen-Printing on Textiles’ (Bloomsbury) and is currently expanding and updating it for a third edition.
