Barbara Shaw: Painterly fabric collages

Integrating a passion for colour and textiles is what drives Barbara Shaw. She specialises in the construction of complex and colourful collages using stitched together fabric scraps, each chosen deliberately and carefully to achieve a specific look.

Barbara uses each fabric piece to add texture and pattern to her images. She brings her artwork alive with textile scraps in vibrant and subtle colours, adding fabrics with sparkle for light, chiffon ribbons for shading, lace for intricate detail and tweed for texture.

Over the years her work has become more impressionistic and she has challenged herself with more complicated subject matter, like her charming animated street scenes and characterful animals.

Her achievements include her selection as Artist in Residence at Chastleton House (National Trust) Oxfordshire (2014) and in Claydon House (National Trust) Buckinghamshire (2015). In 2014 she won a prize for Best Work as a Member of the Oxfordshire Craft Guild and her picture of a 17th Century chair was subsequently bought for the Oxfordshire County Museum Collections. In 2016, her picture ‘The Fabric of Life’ was displayed in an exhibition in the UK Parliament, ‘Tomorrow’s Child’, and her work on an Arctic theme was exhibited in Oxford University’s Museum of Natural History.