Anne Brooke shares her experience on how Essence of Identity with Donna Watson helped her grow as an artist.
About Anne
Art and textile teacher Anne Brooke lives and works in Yorkshire. She has been a fan of arts and crafts workshops for a long time, but finding Donna Watson’s The Essence of Identity had perhaps the greatest impact of any course she had tried so far. Anne talked to Fibre Arts Take Two about how she found the course and how significantly it impacted her and her work.
Finding The Essence of Identity
Being aware of Fibre Arts Take Two and having tried a few courses before, Anne took notice when she saw Donna’s course. “When Donna's course came online I was reading the information about it, the fact that it was called The Essence of Identity really struck me straight away. I actually hadn't come across Donna before I heard about the course, so I went and did some research, and really loved her work. When reading about her background, and the approaches and the way that she worked, I just thought, ‘Wow, that really, really resonated with me.’ I really liked the fact that it was a workshop that was about exploring you and the background behind you, and I was fascinated to see how that was going to evolve.”
“The other thing that I really liked about the idea with Donna’s course,” she says, “was that the whole thing wasn't released in one go, it was done in chunks. Because I was still working, and I wanted to make sure I got time to do it properly. I just really liked the idea of having a chunk where I could sit and watch the modules digest what was going on and then spend a little bit of time really delving into what she'd asked us to do and what she'd asked us to explore.”
Exploring me
For Anne, the idea of exploring herself was a key part of the course, “I think for me, the bit that really, really stood out was when I was actually exploring me.’
“To start off with, one of the things was when we had to make a tree, and you had to think about your roots and where you'd come from and where you were, and then the branches of the tree, which is where you want to go. I found that really, really interesting because it was like a summary of where you were at that moment in time and because you've got the time then to think about what you wanted to do. I thought that was amazing. A really, really simple technique, but just having that time to stop, reflect on what you've done, where you'd come from, where you were at that moment in time.”
“It was a fantastic journey to go on. It was that I felt like Donna had given me permission to be me, and I hadn't been me for quite a long time.” - Anne Brooke
Filling the holes
Donna’s course helped Anne consolidate some of what was already appearing in her work, “The idea of journeys, that was one of the things that was in my work before,” she says, “and that was something that I really, really wanted to go into, but as I was delving a little bit deeper, I realised that circles and holes were really, really important to me..
I'd use them as symbols for my seed heads and my flowers, but as I was looking into this, I realised that the hole that I had was my mum. I lost my mum 21 years ago, and that left a massive hole in my life. I realised that when things like that happen at the time, it's massive, and it's all-encompassing, but as life goes on, it's still there but life sort of grows around it. We cover it, and we patch it, and we repair it, and we mend it as we're going along. This started then making me think about my own practice and what I was doing and looking at holes, and how holes are created in your life for lots and lots of different reasons. But looking at how we mend and repair them is then how I went into my textile work.”
Switching to abstraction
One significant change The Essence of Self brought to Anne’s work was to shift it from representational to abstract. “When work is representational, you can see what it is,” she explains. “I think people can understand it more. And I understand that when things become a bit more abstract, it might not be, firstly, everybody's cup of tea, but I think if you just look into the work and look into the stitching and what you can see because holes are in everybody's lives, this idea of mending and repairing and things like that.
I love it if people look at my work and see something else in it, they might just like it because of the colours or the stitching. Other people will look at it, and they may have a bit more of a textile background, they might have a little bit more of an understanding of what's going on. But I've stopped worrying about that as much.
Before, when I was doing my work, I wanted people to like it, and because I was selling the work, I wanted people to buy it, and if people recognised it, and they could see it very clearly, then it was sellable. I'm not that worried at the moment about things like that. I'm making the work because I want to. I'm not making it for other people.”
The takeaway
Anne left The Essence of Self feeling changed, “Finishing the course I didn't feel like a different person, but I felt like the me that had been there all the time. It's like I had given myself permission to be who I actually was, which is really weird. I feel like I'm getting a little bit emotional! It was a fantastic journey to go on. It was that I felt like Donna had given me permission to be me, and I hadn't been me for quite a long time.”
About Essence of Identity with Donna Watson
This exclusive masterclass is for all artists, all mediums, styles and levels. All course materials, including beautifully filmed videos and comprehensive resource guides, are within an easy to use member portal and yours to revisit anytime.
Essence of Identity – a Masterclass with Donna Watson is an investment in your creative future. It’s a worldwide community for enrolled students to come together in a private online forum and share your thoughts, fears and breakthroughs directly with Donna, ask questions with multiple live Q&A’s, and is yours to keep as a resource for life!