14 October 2026
Fibre art: back to wool, flax and silk
For years Suzan van Lieshout worked with cool, detached materials: medicines, (bio)plastics, plaster and the computer. After her mother died in 2024 she chose something very different. In the series Fibre art she felts with wool, flax and mulberry silk.
“After my mother’s death, art is a refuge of comfort. (…) Now I wanted to feel warmth, softness. Back to the origin. So I started felting. Small sketches, in black and white, high contrast.”
It began with small black-and-white felt works: heads, trees and little landscapes. Then the works grew larger, such as Boven zee (80 x 60 cm) and Zwart bos. Since 2025 she has been bringing felt and photography together: she prints one of her own photographs on textile and works it with wool and flax, as in Goffert in de mist I (96 x 126 cm).
She describes working with these soft materials as “coming home to my human nature”.