detail of a sampler

Jayne Amoah
Creative Arts designer
London, England.

The creative arts have been a key element in my life. My first memory of drawing, was as a child growing up in Ghana. Cut-out paper dolls were popular then, and I found myself drawing dolls and outfits for friends at primary school. However, I did not take my art too serious until I decided to do Interior design at the London College of Furniture.

During my studies in Interior Design and Soft Furnishing at the London College of Furniture, I developed an interest towards Textile Design. After graduating I joined a Silk Painting Business in Camden Lock, where I learned and developed my ideas painting scarves, which inspired me to start my own business.

The main focus of my business was to create hand-painted silk greeting cards and paintings, together with silk scarves and selling my work at weekend craft fairs and craft markets, mainly in Greenwich, London.

Influences to my work has been wide and varied, from modern art were experimentation in colours shapes and textures has been truly inspirational. I also enjoy looking at the splendid architecture of London and mundane everyday objects around me, for new ideas to implement into my creative pursuits.

As designers know, ideas can manifest themselves anywhere and at any time and can the disappear in an instant, this is why I always jot down my ideas in my note pad. This enables me to develop ideas for my greeting cards and silk paintings and also use for future references.

For my embroidery art, which is mainly abstract work, I first come up with a theme as a starting point; develop a few sketches, which is almost always fluid, choose a few fabric shapes and arrange them till I am happy with it and start machine embroidering to my hearts content. For the finishing touch, I embellish with hand embroidered threads and beads.

I studied Creative web design at Tower Hamlets College, a one year course, which I have enjoyed immensely. I would like to take this further, developing flash sites as well as PHP scripting with (X)HTML and CSS web sites.