Art in the Cafe by Julie Wilkerson

1st May - 30th June

Julie was taught hand-stitched needlework by her mother and maternal grandmother as a young girl, establishing what would become a lifelong love of needle and thread.

After a career in fashion, Julie gave up her working life to devote herself to being a homemaker and mother while continuing to pursue her passion for all things artistic.

At 50, she attended The Northern School of Art, where she completed an access course, which gained her a place at university to study Textiles and Surface Design. Deciding not to follow that path, she embarked upon a more independent journey, finding and developing her own style of work, using her passions as her inspiration, from tattoo art, to flowers, nature, land, and sea.

Julie has exhibited in galleries across the North East, having her first solo exhibition, Tattoos in Thread, in 2019. This was followed in 2022 by two more solo exhibitions, both titled Floral in White.

The Art of Embroidery is her latest body of work. As with Floral in WHITE, each piece in this collection depicts a single flower, taken to its simplistic and most stylised shape and form, stitched in bright, vivid blocks of colour and edged in black. Her inspiration is taken from the bold, colourful work of the Pop Art movement. Stitched on, mounted, and framed in white, each piece has a small, delicate beaded element. Again, all of the needlework found here is meticulously hard-stitched, with some pieces taking over 100 hours or more.

Julie aims to make her work affordable; the prices do not equal the number of hours of hand-stitching each piece takes. For her, it is not about the number of stitches used but the design of the pieces as an individual work of art. Each piece, when completed, is bespoke mounted and framed by skilled framers.

To purchase any of the pictures here, please ask at Reception.

The Cafe, where the pictures are displayed, is open Monday-Friday 8am-5pm, Saturday 9am-5pm and closed Sundays.