Claire Leggett
Claire is a colour, pattern, stitch and print loving painter, designer and tutor – living in Birmingham UK.
She has a degree in Fashion & Textiles specialising in Print, and had a long career as a Primary school teacher specialising in Children with Additional Needs. Her talent for teaching and creativity has made her a successful teaching partner at such venues as : Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery; University Birmingham’s Winterbourne Gardens, local art groups, MAC Birmingham in the Textiles, Painting & Drawing and Digital depts; with Mothership CiC delivering community arts to women and their children, with schools in partnership with Walsall Arts for All, with Multistory as a Community Engagement Artist & the NHS Royal Orthopaedic Hospital delivering workshops as part of the Pain Management clinic.
Claire has been creating surface pattern designs as a freelancer for many years for clients such as Huggies and has also been featured in The Pattern Base book by Thames & Hudson. Her work is currently represented by Pattern Bank.
Claire was Artist in Residence at Winterbourne House & Gardens, University of Birmingham in 2019. This forged a longstanding relationship and Claire can regularly be found there teaching short courses in Painting & Drawing and day classes in art and textile art techniques.
Keen to invest in her community, she started running a short course near her home; Painting & Drawing Nature at The Pavilion, Warley Woods.
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In September 2019 I was Artist in Residence at Birmingham University, Winterbourne House & Gardens.
The 18 month long residency provided me with the artistic opportunity to inhabit this beautiful and inspirationally rich space for a period of time. By having time to ‘dwell’ in the garden through the seasons and to work on site drawing and painting, I was able to discover and experience Winterbourne and its influence on my art practice.
My work as a visual artist spans painting, drawing, textile art, embroidery and printing and also extends into commercial surface pattern design. For example the drawing of a flower can move from sketchbook to Photoshop, from paper to fabric, from 3D to 2D and find new life as a painted art piece or a hand-made printed fabric item.
In this way I explored the gardens through drawing and painting and then translated that inspiration into not just fine art such as “Anthemis” featured but also embroidered pieces such as the chair seat cover pictured, printed art and hand-printed fabric such as the foxglove fabric in progress as shown and repeat patterns for surface pattern designs.
There is a short portfolio film showing some of the work I created here.
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4 Seasons Patterns – greetings cards
This pack of 4 Seasons Patterns greetings cards is reproduced from my original surface pattern designs. There is one for each of the seasons: Spring is pretty pink blossoms, Summer is full of roses, Autumn sees the Swifts leave us for warmer climes and Winter is fir needles and pine cones. Each card is blank inside […]
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Raindrops Peg Bag
A cotton peg bag hand-printed and hand-made by Claire Leggett. The fabric was screen-printed using a hand cut stencil over laid on top of a mono-printed base fabric. It measures 10cm wide by 31 cm and has a front opening for pegs (not supplied) Hand wash only.
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Lemons, Green Plate.
Lemons, Green Plate is a simple little watercolour gouache painting that’s full of sunshine and zest. This original painting comes mounted in a white mount with a bespoke aperture cut. Painting size (inside aperture) 22 cm x 15.3 cm Whole size of mounted piece 24 cm x 21.5 cm Gouache watercolour on watercolour paper Sold Unframed […]
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Cryséde
I’ve been investigating the work of the Cryséde textile design studio since seeing it in the Penlee Museum last year. Alec Walker and his wife Kay Earle established Cryséde in Newlyn in the 1920’s, moving then to St Ives and finally, in the 1940s and 50s to Hayle. Self-taught artist Walker designed the patterns which […]
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Embroidered Birds
Last month I got the itch to do some textile art, helped on greatly by ‘stitch of the month’ generated by a group I go to. I think because the first two stitches reminded me of feathers, I decided that I’d make the beginnings of a stitched fabric bird book. The first stitch (top) is […]
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