Rena Rouhipour

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White Altar Cloth, Red Altar Cloth

I am a textile artist. My chosen medium is fine art tapestry weaving. I also use wet felting, embroidery and sometimes stitch to create expressive pieces that capture the mood of the seasons and the landscape. Painting, drawing and photography are how I investigate and explore my subjects that I then translate to more simplified tapestry design focusing on colour, texture, shape and line. Linen and wool are my favoured weft, naturally dyed or undyed where possible.

Title of Work

Saint Bronagh’s Well

Medium: Woven Tapestry

Dimensions 23 cms x 22 cms.

This tapestry piece is an abstract representation of the Holy Well associated with St Bronagh in the parish of Kilbroney. It focuses on the experience of looking down through the weathered stonework into the blackness of the water beneath, hence ‘inside and out’. It depicts the dry, weathered surface of the outer stonework with its multicoloured striations. The stark black rectangles show unknowable dark depths inside. The brighter half-circle references the ‘bulláun’, a cup-like indentation found commonly in the stonework of holy wells. The water contained by the bulláun was said to have strong healing properties. In this tapestry, the semi-circle references the arch above the holy well as well as the sun and the moon which mark the passage of time.