Mary Roscoe lives in Prescot, Merseyside, and was a finalist in the 2009 EAC’s Over 60s Art Awards. You can see her in the 2009 video on the Home page.
In Spring 2010, I went to visit her, and am I glad I did! Little did I realise, as I stood on her doorstep, what a magical hour I was about to spend in the company of a most unusual and talented artist.
"The Cornfield" after Monet
I had been entranced by the intricacy of Mary’s work at the 2009 Bankside Gallery, exhibition, but her miniature, ‘The Trellis’, depicting a flower-bordered garden path, didn’t prepare me the exuberance, vitality and sheer variety of embroideries displayed on every wall in her house. Galloping horses, football fans, pigeons, dogs, Buckingham Palace garden parties, impressionist landscapes and figures; they’re all there, lining the stairs, down the hall, around the lounge, in the bedrooms, and some, sadly, relegated to the garage.
"The Charge of the Light Brigade"
Each of Mary’s embroideries take hours, if not months to complete, and one famously, ‘Queen Victoria’s Jubilee Garden Party’ (after Sargant) took a full year. Starting with a piece of white cotton material – and Mary admits to using up old sheets and pillowcases in her time – she traces the outlines of her design, and then uses a box of children’s watercolours to paint in the blocks of colour. Finally, using sewing cottons, Mary starts to sew, always starting at the top and working down the picture. She uses three basic stitches in her work; French knots, straight stitches, and occasionally chain stitch. As she works, the picture seems to come to life, building a 3D effect with the depth and colour mix of French knots, often using two colours of thread in the needle.
One corner of Mary’s dining room is an Aladdin’s cave, with the raw materials of her work, over 650 reels of sewing cotton, tantalisingly stored in racks of B&Q mini-drawer sets intended for screws and nuts and bolts! Sitting in her chair, with the window behind her, and working for hours every day when the light is good enough, Mary works her magic!
"Queen Victoria's Jubilee Garden Party"
She has had no formal training in art or embroidery, but always made her own clothes as a youngster, remembering sewing up dresses from Lewis’s remnants on her treadle sewing machine on a Saturday afternoon, and then wearing them to go out on Saturday night. Later, she took up painting, but was inspired to try embroidery in 1982, after a visit to a local exhibition. Her first picture was a copy of Monet’s ‘Harmony in Green’. 150 pictures and nearly 30 years later, the evidence of Mary’s ‘obsession’, as she has been known to call her love of embroidery, is all around me as I am privileged with a tour round her private collection.
"Manchester United Coming Home, 1999"
