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Rachel Scott (artist)

British textile artist (born 1948) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Rachel Scott (artist)
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Rachel Scott, Lady Bowling née Tripp (born 20 April 1940 in Fulmerchase, Buckinghamshire, England), known professionally as Rachel Scott or Rachel Scott Bowling, is a British artist who creates "rustic hand-spun rugs",[2] hand-woven with her own spun undyed wool from breeds of British sheep with different coloured fleeces.[1] She grew up in the Somerset, Dorset and Hampshire countryside[3] before moving to London in 1959 to study painting at the Royal College of Art.[4]

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Education and early career

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Rachel Scott was one of three students to receive a four-year undergraduate place being trialled at the Royal College of Art for students who had not previously studied at art school for four years. Scott also won a continuation scholarship that extended her studies to a fifth year and a travelling scholarship with which she travelled to Italy, Greece and Turkey. Many of Scott’s fellow students had undertaken national service before beginning their studies.[5]

During this time at the Royal College the primary subjects of Scott’s paintings were the interiors of the buildings around her. She painted the corridors and windows of the Cromwell Road common room and stairwells, and was particularly drawn to passages and openings. In 1964 she was elected a member of The London Group,[3] an artist-led collective that was established in 1913.[6]

After leaving the RCA she taught pottery part-time at the Ursuline High School, Wimbledon until her daughters were born in 1967 and 1970.[4] She bought a kiln[5] for herself in 1972. Scott used red and buff clay to make pinch pots and unglazed chess sets.[3] For children she made miniature farm and tea sets, and cups with animal heads.[7] Her ceramics were sold at craft fairs and in numerous outlets in London, including the department stores Liberty and Heals.[7]

Scott also made and sold small woollen toys, such as crocheted bears, elephants, donkeys, owls and cats.[7] She used lambswool jumpers that she found at jumble sales and unravelled them to make the small woollen animals. This was a continuation of a craft taught to her by her mother of making small animals from pipe cleaners bound with wool.[3]

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Painting (1959–1979)

Scott’s early paintings were of rooms, passages and staircases[8] in burnt umber, raw umber and white. By 1970 her focus shifted to darker interiors of black, white and grey paintings, mainly of empty rooms and tunnels. From 1976 until the late 1970s Scott painted mainly landscapes of Dorset, such as The Glebe, Durweston, where she grew up.[9] Scott stopped painting in 1979[10] and focused solely on her weaving practice.[11][12]

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Weaving (1976–present day)

Before she started weaving, Scott tore up and dyed white baby clothes, nappies and sheets and to make braided rag rugs.[3]

In 1976 Scott noticed the stair carpet at her home was wearing out and needed replacing. She began weaving from this point[3][13] and took weekend courses in spinning and tapestry weaving at the Handweavers Studio in Walthamstow.

Scott’s then-husband found wood from a skip to make her an upright frame loom, which she used to make hand-woven rugs. Scott had been inspired by an exhibition of Navajo blankets that she had seen at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London in May or June 1973.[3][14]

She spun the wool for the rugs using a spinning wheel made by her brother. It consisted of a long bobbin screwed to a Singer sewing machine base.[3]

Scott uses undyed fleeces in different colours from British sheep such as Shetlands, Herdwicks, Black Welsh Mountain sheep and Manx Loaghtans.[3][15]

Clothes

Scott began making clothes as a child and knitted jumpers for her father and brother. Difficulties with getting the sizing right led her to make knitted rectangles that she sewed together so that the size could be adapted to the wearer.[4]

From the mid-1960s Scott started making suits from crochet squares and knitted rectangles for herself, then in the 1970s she began making patchwork dresses to wear.[16] Scott continues to only wear the clothes she has made: handmade crocheted and knitted woollen suits in the winter and patchwork cotton dresses in the summer. She stopped making new garments in the early 2000s, instead replacing and mending what already exists.[3]

Manuela Wirth of Hauser & Wirth has featured Scott’s suits and dresses as part of The Forgotten Her Story project that celebrates women who are artists, craftswomen and thinkers.[16][17]

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Frank Bowling

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In 1977 Scott reconnected with the abstract artist Frank Bowling who was spending more time in London after living in New York since 1966. She and Bowling first met when they were both students of painting at the Royal College of Art.[18] They married in 2013.[4][19][20]

From the 1980s onwards, Bowling named some of his paintings after Scott, including a series called Rachel in 1989[21] and 1991, and Scottscarkeysaltar in 1983, that has Scott’s car keys embedded in the work.[22]

Scott has supported Bowling in his artmaking,[19] making contributions to interviews and oral histories and taking him to his daily studio sessions. A colourfully handknitted patchwork armchair by Scott, that Bowling always used to sit at their home, is now a mainstay of the studio.[22]

In September 1990 in New York, the inventory of Bowling’s works was instigated due to a studio move from 535 Broadway, Manhattan to Dumbo, Brooklyn, which required new racks to be made for the works. From then on, Scott kept a ring-bound notebook where she recorded an inventory of Bowling’s paintings in New York and London.

Bowling and Scott have exhibited their work in parallel at two separate solo exhibitions at the Cookhouse Galleries at Chelsea College of Arts in 2015, and side by side in Scott’s exhibition at MAKE, Hauser & Wirth.

Scott and Bowling are patrons of Chisenhale Gallery in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets and Scott supports young artists with a bursary at the Hampstead School of Art, London where she is a patron.[23]

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Family life

Scott and Bowling live in Pimlico, London.[3][24]

Scott has two daughters, Marcia and Iona, both of whom are professional artists.[22] Marcia is a painter;[25] Iona is a sculptor and multimedia artist.[26]

Awards and recognition

At the Aljira Fine Art Auction in Newark, New Jersey in May 2013, Frank Bowling and Rachel Scott received, jointly, Aljira's first Timehri Lifetime Achievement Award.[27]

Selected exhibitions

Exhibitions (paintings)

Exhibitions (weaving)

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Bibliography

Exhibition catalogues

  • Langtry, Isabel H. Landscape in weaving, London: HSoA Publishing, 2024
  • Bunker, John. Rachel Scott New Works 2017–2018, London: HSoA Publishing, 2018

Books

  • Treggiden, Katie. Weaving: Contemporary Makers on the Loom. Ludion, 2018

Further reading

  • "Rachel Scott: With My Hands". Hauser & Wirth. 2023. Retrieved 15 March 2025.
  • Crichton-Miller, Emma (6 January 2023). "Rachel Scott's house full of woven wonders". Financial Times. Retrieved 13 March 2025.
  • Card, Nell (19 December 2022). "Hauser & Wirth's Craft-Led U.K. Gallery Offers a Glimpse Into Artist Rachel Scott's Vast Hand-Woven World". Artnet. Retrieved 15 March 2025.
  • Thorpe, Harriet (5 February 2025). "Patchwork family". The World of Interiors. Retrieved 16 March 2025.
  • Lloyd-Smith, Harriet (21 November 2022). "Textile artists: the pioneers of a new material world". Wallpaper. Retrieved 16 March 2025.
  • "Rachel Scott". Toast Magazine. 30 June 2021. Retrieved 14 March 2025.
  • Pritchard, Eleanor (19 November 2018). "Rachel Scott". eleanorpritchard.com. Retrieved 14 March 2025.
  • Treggiden, Katie (24 May 2017). "Made in London: Rachel Scott". Design Milk. Retrieved 14 March 2025. [This piece features the Made in London film about Rachel’s practice by filmmaker William Scothern].
  • “The Style List.” Stylist Magazine, July 24, 2013.
  • Williams, Holly (4 August 2012). "Chroma Chameleon: The Bright Essence of Frank Bowling's Paintings Floods his London Home". The Independent. Retrieved 14 March 2025.
  • The Observer Magazine, The Ethical Issue, 18 June 2006
  • [no author] “London Group After 50 Years.” The Times, March/April 1964.
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Notes and references

External links

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