The pieces above were made post-graduation from the Alberta College of Art Design. Even as a mature student with a successful career in journalism behind me, I found myself lost and confused as to how to move forward. The antidote to my paralysis was knitting. I was ( and still am) a rather indifferent knitter inevitably confused, defeated or just plain bored by complex patterns. But it kept me busy . I didn’t care what or how I was knitting. I just kept going reacting intuitively to the present moment –adding rows, turning strange corners , knitting backwards, up and down, changing needles, wool and colours arbitrarily, sometimes substituting knotting and weaving for knitting. But at some point I would always know that I was finished with a piece and as I manipulated the outcome of this ‘woolgathering’ I discovered sculptural forms that made a kind of sense, sometimes identifiable as a face or mask, other times perhaps a landscape or just as often, simply pure abstract form. The series includes 12 pieces. Looking back at them now I see a connection to my present drawing interest in the association of time and labour as an integral part of the means of production
Anne Petrie 