Although, on the face of it, my work fits into the tradition of “textile art”, it is probably more akin to drawing and painting – it’s just that I draw and paint with thread. Having been thoroughly put off sewing at primary school, it wasn’t until I was required to undertake a Stitched Textiles module as part of my part time Combined Studies degree course at Edinburgh College of Art many years later that I realised how versatile a sewing machine could be. It quickly became apparent to me that freemotion machine embroidery was the medium I had been searching for: that thread could create tonal complexity, texture and depth, and allow me a way into painting, as well as a language in which I could explore my love of trees.

This love is long held, going right back to when I was tiny. The fascination is not an academic one, it’s an instinctual one. I live near the Royal Botanic Gardens in Edinburgh and spend hours up close with their wonderful collection of trees, often returning to the thought that if these were sculptures we would look up in awe and disbelief that something so epic and beautiful could exist. But, worldwide, we often, at best, take them for granted and, at worst, indiscriminately destroy them instead of cherishing and protecting them. The horror of how we treat trees is also something that fires my practice.

Trees are our giant protectors, they are beings that defend us, hold the earth together. My work is an investigation of my relationship with this notion, how we depend on them, how we are often merciless in their destruction. Their presence dwarfs us, and if we do register at all, we are like insects, endlessly busy, leading manic, futile lives, we come and go, and those trees we choose to protect, or ignore, live on, silent, dignified.

The philosopher, Martin Buber, suggests that if we refer to the world in terms of ‘I and Thou’ rather than ‘I and It’ we suddenly apprehend new beings. When you look at it this way, trees become considered as unique individuals, each one ‘you’ rather than ‘it’ and they become known to us in an entirely different way.

It is the sense of living alongside a race of ‘others’, who surround us but who we can never fully comprehend, that I want to convey in my work. I try and make my pieces an immersive experience – I want to viewer to have the feeling that they’re entering into another realm: allowing themselves to be enveloped and absorbed. My pieces also demand close proximity, I sew only centimetres from each work, as if examining the texture of bark by touch, I am only able to see what I have achieved by stepping back. Each work is composed of tiny stitches, creating my representations of these beings cell by cell. The machine is noisy, I barely hear the world beyond, my eyes focused on the tiny points where the thread appears and disappears. Creating these giants from such microscopic marks is a way of honouring their majesty, my attempt to come to terms with what they are, whether they are conscious of us, and our responsibilities to them and the natural world.