Artist Bio
Lindsey McTavish is a Canadian fibre artist working between Nelson, British Columbia and Georgian Bay, Ontario. Using wool and silk, she creates richly layered contemporary works that move between landscape, memory and abstraction.

Originally form Toronto, McTavish studied fibre arts at the Kootenay school of the Arts before completing a Fashion design diploma at the International Academy of Design in Toronto. Her background in textiles and design continues to inform a practice built around colour, texture, and an intuitive approach to making.

Artistic Approach
McTavish builds each work slowly, layering wool and silk to create depth, movement and light. Rather than treating fibre as a traditional craft material, she approaches it much as a painter approaches pigment - using colour, line and texture to construct the image.

 

The resulting surfaces are distinctly tactile, with stitching, raw fibre and shifts in density remaining visible. Some works begin with a recognizable landscape or moment; others develop more intuitively, allowing memory and feeling to shape the composition.

Inspiration
Landscape has always been central to McTavish's work. she draws particularly from the forests and mountains surrounding her home in British Columbia and from Georgian Bay, where she spends part of each year on a six-acre island in Bayfield inlet.

 

The exposed rock, wind swept pines, changing water and immense skies of Georgian Bay have been a source of inspiration for much of her life. Rather than reproducing these places literally, she uses them as a starting point - allowing colour, memory and atmosphere to shift the landscape into something more personal.

Community & Exhibitions
McTavish is a member-owner of the Craft Connection Gallery in Nelson, British Columbia, a long running artist cooperative representing the work of more than 200 Canadian artists and crafts people.

 

Her work has been exhibited and published internationally with appearances in Canada, the United States, Europe and the United Kingdom. Alongside her studio practice, her involvement with the Craft Connection reflects a longstanding commitment to artist-led spaces and the wider creative community.

Vision
For McTavish, making art is a form of escape- a way of returning to a place, moments and feelings through colour and fibre. she hopes her work can offer that same sense of escape to the viewer, transporting them somewhere of their own: a remembered landscape, a familiar feeling, or a place they might simply want to disappear into for a while.