Melanie Ashton-Hosseini

Textile Artist

Melanie Ashton-Hosseini graduated from what is now Manchester Metropolitan University in 1992, with a B.A. Hons in Fine Art (painting). Since then she has worked as a fashion stylist, painted mandalas and qualified as an Ayurvedic therapist. She discovered the beauty of felt making from a workshop in Edinburgh in 2004 and has been felting ever since. She sells her work in a variety of places from craft fairs to galleries and shops.

I feel a connection to felt making, to the sensuousness and physicality of this ancient craft. To the endless possibility within the seemingly humble fibre. I love that I'm connected by that fibre to a chain of felt ancestry spanning millennia.

Ultimately, I love its simplicity - fibre, hands and water.

Colour features strongly in my felt, I search to find a way to express the vibrancy I see in the natural world. Petals after a rainstorm, red earth, deep green-blue pines, saffron and lapis lazuli. I find contentment in hues and tones, playing one against the other until a harmony is found.

What influences me most is the awe-inspiring creativity of Mother Earth, her magnificence and sheer diversity is mind-blowing. The incomprehensible depth of this life/earth shows me that there is an eternal wellspring of deep creativity in each soul. Her creativity abounds and constantly goads me to take a dip.

I am also inspired by the incredible tapestry of folk art traditions and adornment worldwide, old and new. By the wondrous energy of shamanic art, such as Huichol yarn paintings, the work of Peruvian shaman Pablo Amaringo, and Aboriginal Art. By anything that expresses the dynamic flow and energy of Nature and our nature.

I hope to create works as magical and enchanted as this life and earth we are part of. My work is a journey into the void, of whatever I drag, kicking and screaming, back with me to manifest in the here and now.

Contact Melanie via her web site at www.enchanted-earth.org