BARBARA BROWN
Barbara Brown was trained at Canterbury College of Art and then at the Royal College of Art from 1953 - 1956. She is known for her strong geometric award-winning designs from the 1960s and early 1970s, produced chiefly for Heal Fabrics Ltd.. She was an inspiring tutor of printed textiles at various Art Colleges from the 1960s and at the Royal college of Art until the early 1990s. Barbara Brown talks to Little bird. London 2007 What is your inspiration when you start a new design?I’m doing quite a lot of botanical type things at the moment, So obviously I start with the plant or Flower. Otherwise it tends to be rather theoretical and mathematical. Do you work through a procedure that you set for yourself in order to challenge or develop your ability?
Yes and it becomes fairly abstract. Your early work, particularly the designs you did for Heals were quite geometrical.
Yes, they were based on machines and architecture. It was very abstract. This analytical approach to your work, is that a conscious means of developing your style?
No its just my personality. I have to ground myself. It’s got to be actual, The starting point. Tell me about the botanical work that you are doing at the moment.
I wanted a change .I love plants and love drawing. The drawing is more important to me than the painting. It’s the drawing more than the colour that I like. Its very much the form that I’m interested and the colour comes after. I’m not a wonderful colourist, I’m better at form .I don’t like over decoration. As you can see I don’t like pattern. Pattern in the interior? You design Furnishing fabrics….
Yes, but I wouldn’t give them house room, I can’t bear it. I don’t like pictures on the walls either, I like the walls to be plain. I’ve got those (pointing to two framed pictures, both painted by Barbara.) But they are very much a part of my work. A colour wheel and the other is a chart that shows how 2 complimentary colours can be combined to create greys of varying degrees of colour. See how wonderful these greys are, you can get a cool grey and a warm grey, that sort of range is absolutely thrilling. That is so in tune with your analytical approach. Did the chart take a long time?
Constant trial and error, I’m now completely happy with it. I use it constantly as a reference. When you’re building up your colours in a design, do you think about tone and colour separately?
No, its all one. I just love those neutral greyish colours. They are your preferred colours then. Do you think people would recognise that in your work?
No ,not for a moment. In creating patterns from your motifs. Do you have a system or a preferred method or does the motif dictate how you create the pattern.
Very much so, It’s almost instinctive now, it comes automatically. I don’t have to think about the negative space and the positive space. Sometimes it works well and sometimes it’s the most horrendous disaster When you design Textiles ,do you design for yourself or solely with the industry in mind?
A bit of both. Half the time one is doing what one’s been asked to do and hating every minute of it. I just do it. I should be sending out 20 designs and they’re lucky if they get two and I don’t mean lucky because they’re mine. I’ve always been a last minute worker. I’ve got to have deadlines to work towards. But doing something for myself I can spend days on something like that chart, I love it Do you do Collections then?
I should do but I don’t. I just do the odd design, because I’ve decided I’m just going to do what I want to do. I don’t want to be dictated to. Are you a very critical person with regards to your work?
Oh yes, I hate it all. How do you overcome that?
I just dissociate myself from it, otherwise I’d never do anything, very ,very critical. I’m constantly starting again, chucking it, stretching paper, getting started. You work on paper, you don’t use a computer at all?
On paper, yes. I use the computer for reference or for storing photographs, visual references, plants etc. I’ll draw a flower then scan it so I can then enlarge the image. Certainly don’t design on it and I won’t use colour. A word now about the nature of your profession. Textile design can be a very solitary occupation. How do you find it?
That I like, it suits my personality, to be doing something alone. I couldn’t work in a studio or an office. I hate that sort of thing, I have never done it. Do you have many friends with whom you can talk on a creative level?
Oh yes. But I am very much a loner, I have no fear of being alone. Has it always been surface pattern that interested you or have you ventured into other areas?
No I haven’t ventured into other areas because, that was my way of earning a living. What I’m much more interested in are areas that I have never gone into. If I had my life over again I would have done Medicine. One lands in places…I just found that was the way I started and it just seemed the only way forward, .I don’t remember whether I was pushed into it or whether I chose it.. Memory is such a wonderful thing isn’t it. I enjoyed teaching when I did it. The way forward in teaching is through the administration side rather than the teaching. I enjoyed the time with students but hated the meetings and the admin. I had no ambitions in that area so I never became anything other than a part timer. When did you stop teaching?
In 1988.I never missed it. It seems that you have a strong affinity with Plants and Nature and that its inspiration is more than purely visual..I understand that you have an amazing allotment
To be honest it is the physical side. I love digging. It is jolly hard work. The contrast between the physical activity and the concentration of designing must give you a real sense balance in your life.
Yes it does. But I don’t grow flowers to draw them.
The Botanical side, the development from the seed, watching it grow, the seasons, it’s marvellous. I have a wonderful allotment with piles of veg, nearly all of it goes to neighbours. I enjoy the planning and trying out new things. . I’ve got 6 beds 4ft x 6 ft One of the beds is just wild flowers then I grow fruits Strawberries ,raspberries, blackcurrants, white currants gooseberries….and vegetables .I like to grow rows not just one or two plants, because also they look great like that.. I just love the physical act of doing it. I can sit for days at the drawing board, but then I can go to the allotment, which is lovely. It is that change of activity. A last word about your drawing.
I do an awful lot of drawing of things like shells or stones, seed heads, natural things. What do you do with the drawings. do you use them as reference for your work?
I keep them or give them to friends.
Sometimes I use them for reference but not always ,because if you draw or paint some pebbles for example, nobody wants a textile with pebbles all over it. Why not though, wouldn’t it be wonderful.
And the conversation continued over delicious coffee………
