Ariella Green was born and educated in Israel. My first training was in nursing. In the mid-seventies I came to the UK to further my art training; initially with a Foundation course at St. Martins School of Art, London and then a BA at Goldsmith’s College, London. Later I did an MA and PGCE at Manchester Metropolitan University. I have worked independently as a Textile Artist and exhibited widely in the UK, USA and Japan; both independently and with the British Crafts Council, the ‘62 Group’ and with ‘New Fibre Arts’. Alongside my work as an artist, I fell in love and stayed in the UK bringing up a family.
Ariella Green’s imagery stems from her own past and present experiences and imagination; her ‘library of moments’ as she calls it. Her memories, story writing, poetry and thoughts are clarified through making. Ideas are worked and re-worked; narratives take different paths meeting, passing, clashing, coming together again but forever driven forward towards a harmony. Green uses a combination of fabrics she has screenprinted, transfer or digitally printed (often from her own photographs) or hand-painted enhanced by machine and hand stitching.
Her technique is essentially fabric collage, using material I have prepared her and finished with applique, hand stitching and paint. The fabrics she uses may be silk, polyester or cotton, and they are prepared in quantity using silk screen-printing of photographic images, transfer paints, crayons and fabric paints. I also use direct application of paint and resist techniques and all the pigments are colourfast and heat fixed. This stock of prepared fabrics then provide a palette of colours and forms for later use in my collages in which they are pieced and machine stitched onto a Vilene backing. The work is further developed and finished with hand stitching, found materials and fabric paint. The finished work is usually mounted on acid free card, framed and glazed.
This method of collage is central to the meaning of the work. It helps her find her way into her subject matter – as if taking me on a journey. In piecing together the different shapes and colours, the path of this journey becomes clearer and the subject matter is revealed. The landscape of her birthplace is central to her composition and can also be stimulated by pattern and texture in the textile itself. This process of collage generates a kind of disruption of harmony, which Ariella works to mend through the stitching – a drive for peace between conflicting forces being reflected in a drive towards harmony in the composition. Ariella's childhood plays an important role. Even if the piece is dark in subject matter and colour, it will always contain somewhere in it an element of hope. She loves to tell stories through her work, and through these stories explore the themes of memory, longing and joy.
