Many people think that embroidery is a boring craft. Anyone who thinks that should see these amazing creations!
Sheena Liam is the artist who has created a range of inspiring embroidered portraiture.
She shows that there are incredibly creative ways to stitch and that thinking out of the box can work wonders!
Her series of embroidered images are all breathtakingly well composed. The images stitched into the embroidery are mostly of solo women.
But what makes these images unique is that the thread doesn’t just stay inside the canvas.
Instead, the hair of the women flows out, making the images into 3D masterpieces.
Liam has created hundreds of these embroidered images. In all of them, the hair of the subjects cascades from the canvas in an awe-inspiring way.
All of Liam’s compositions are based upon photographs of herself. Therefore all of them can be considered self-portraits.
The images are highly personal to the artist, and each one explores a different aspect of her life.
It’s amazing to see how so much emotion can be wrought out of embroidery!
Also, the way that the overall image fits together in each one is inspiring. Many artists, when faced with a similar task, would struggle to achieve such cohesion.
But Liam manages to make the minimal threading of the main image flow perfectly with the detailed hair emerging from each canvas.
The final images are so great that they look almost effortless. But this is far from the case.
Anyone who does embroidery will tell you that it’s much harder than it looks.
Instead, Liam painstakingly plans out the points of every single stitch and how much thread it requires. If just one piece of thread were to be mis-stitched, then the entire flow of the picture could be ruined!
And to get a slight idea of the craftsmanship involved with every image, Liam has posted several of her images while they were a work in progress.
Like many artists, her work is evolving with every piece. The initial posts on her Instagram page are more basic (but still amazing!)
The more recent pieces are showing off ever more complex designs.
She’s even starting to create images that feature more than one subject in the picture.
Just think, while the current pictures are amazing, there’s so much more to come!
Sheena Liam herself is also a model as well as an artist.
She’s from Malaysia, but her job means that she has to travel frequently. And all of the traveling means that Liam had had the time to practice and perfect her talent at embroidery.
Liam herself says “In a strange way modelling parallels my art in the sense I often have to use body language as a means of expressing a certain sort of mood. It’s no different from my embroideries.”
Unsurprisingly, Liam’s work has been featured in a range of publications. Teen Vogue said that the canvases were “unlike anything we’ve seen before.”
And while the images are first presented on Instagram, the interest that they’ve drummed up has led to presentations all over the world. For example, in October 2018, Liam’s work was exhibited in Paris, France.
People love these images. Some people have even decided to have tattoos based on the images!
What an amazing way to show your appreciation of an artist’s work!
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