Claire Benn: Reductive Landscapes

After a career in business, training and coaching, Claire Benn returned to her first love – textiles. Twenty-five years on, she is one of the UK’s leading mixed media and textile artists.

Based in Surrey, UK, Claire has worked as an author, curator and educator in art textiles. She has published a series of books about her specialist form of textile art and runs workshops in the UK, Germany, Canada and the USA.

Claire is inspired by nature, in particular by the desolate, and yet highly textured, landscapes of the Arctic, Alaska and New Mexico – places where she enters an experience of emptiness and timelessness, evoking thoughts and feelings that she interprets into her textile art. Over the years her practice has become quieter and slower – so much so that her social media accounts and blog are entitled ‘Her Quiet Materials’.

In this article, we learn more about Claire’s inspiration and motivation and how her journey with textiles has taken her to a more peaceful and meditative pace of both life and work.