Cutting It

Debs has always loved art and being creative.  In her early years she pursued many crafts as hobbies, from clay to watercolours, oils to papier mache, and enjoyed doing “every course going”.  Her working life began with an eight year stint for Boots in Nottingham where she worked on product development and buying.  Working with designers, she helped to introduce new products and packaging for all sorts of wares including hosiery and toiletries.  After Boots, she moved into a sales role in the Stoke-on-Trent potteries, supplying retailers with their china goods.  Later this role expanded to include goods imported from China and India, supplied to large high street retailers as well as small independent outlets.  She recalls travelling around with a suitcase full of china teapots.  At the same time, she became more involved in the design process and gained understanding of fashion trends and influences, and how these translate into marketing and sales.

After the birth of her son, life on the road became too difficult and change was needed. So, as a mature student and a mother, she enrolled on a course with the University of Arts London (UAL).  This one year foundation course gave her a broad introduction to many styles of creative art as well as the basics of running a business.  She thoroughly enjoyed being a mature student amongst teenagers and found the whole experience stimulating, useful and enjoyable (even having to resit maths and English).

This course finished in May 2013 and in June she moved to Fowey.  Having given up her job and career she knew she needed to “do something” to earn a living.  But what? Graphic design had originally appealed to her, but the relentless move to AI and digital design in this area put her off.  Sitting at a computer screen was not for her.  She considered painting, but after visiting local galleries felt she could not compete. At college she had enjoyed using a scalpel, finding it completely absorbing and therapeutic.  She had also followed Rob Ryan, a London artist who made papercut illustrations of poems and words, and championed the resurgence of this ancient craft.  She thought this might work.  With views of the river from her window for inspiration, refined into a simple image, Debs made her first papercut pictures.  Nervously, she took three to a local gallery.  Her anxiety was unfounded as they were instantly positive about her and her work.  Her pictures were all sold within a week.  She made more using local landscapes and scenes as her inspiration. Colours and uniformity were important in her work and the concept of rows of boats, lobsters and other seaside images became characteristic.  She trademarked her business as Cornish Papercut Art, and with her background in homewares she explored the possibilities of using her images to produce household goods like ceramics, textiles and wallpaper.  This was moderately successful but very hard work.  The numbers required to make it viable were impossibly huge, and the outlay enormous.  She decided instead to focus on her pictures.

Papercutting has been around for centuries in various forms.  It was in use in China in 4th century AD, possibly as a pattern for elaborate embroidery, and is still popular in Chinese culture today, especially for traditional events such as Chinese New Year. In contrast the Museum of Modern Art in New York currently displays a huge 54 foot long papercut by Henri Matisse, entitled The Swimming Pool, made in the last decade of his life.  Papercutting has evolved in different cultures, with distinctive styes, all over the world.  It is an art form that can be practised with little investment of materials but an abundance of time and patience.  It has been an early method of portraiture in the form of cut out silhouettes, and a way of recording everyday life and special events, and a way of making decorations for festive occasions.  Most of us will remember cutting paper chains for Christmas, and cutting strings of people from a concertina folded piece of paper.

When the commission for the Tresemple development arrived, along with details of the wallpapers and interior design for the cottages, she was delighted although initially a little flummoxed by a brief outside her usual seaside images.  However, the richness of the natural environment, the tidal river and marshes, the abundant bird and insect life all provided new ideas, and visitors to Tresemple will see these translated into the pictures on the walls.  Butterflies and dragonflies, wildflowers, riverbanks and rolling hills all capture the sense of place reminiscent of the imagined worlds of Swallows and Amazons, and the Wind in the Willows.  All that is missing is the sound of birds and the smell of grass and salt marshes.

Debs says she has a “fairly” disciplined working pattern.  She works five days a week, usually sitting at her kitchen table.  The work requires complete concentration, and she will often leave a particularly taxing piece after a couple of hours before continuing later.  The paper she uses is ordinary watercolour paper.  The coloured paper behind the cut comes from a huge range of sources, mostly bought online, colour being most important to her.  Some years ago she was given a stack of obsolete marine charts. After numerous experiments she worked out how best to use these, reversing her usual method. By cutting shapes into the maps she has incorporated her signature rolling hills, and sea vessels typical of the local area, to make unique illustrations pertinent to individual places.  Going forward Debs is exploring adding a third dimension to her pictures by cutting and folding the paper.  Inspired by Chinese fortune fish that curl in your palm, and influenced by origami, these new works retain an ageless and elegant simplicity.