Llinos Owen

Artist Statement

Llinos Owen (b.1998) is a Welsh Fine Art textile artist, originally from North Wales and currently based in London. The artist moved to London in 2017 to study Fine Art: Painting at Wimbledon College of Arts (UAL) and graduated in 2020. Since graduating, Owen has developed her artistic practice to be mostly textiles based and has exhibited her textured tapestries in many group exhibitions in the UK such as Delphian Gallery’s “Synthesis” at the Saatchi Gallery and the “Let’s Talk About Textiles” Exhibition at The Other Art Fair in early 2022, as well as her first Solo Exhibition titled “Thank Your Lucky Stars” at Orleans House Gallery in 2021. The artist was also named as one of Saatchi Art’s Rising Stars and since then, her textured tapestries have been exhibited and commissioned for collaborative projects such as album art for electronic duo Disclosure for their 2023 album “Alchemy” and a solo exhibition titled “Pick Me Up” for the 2023 Shoreditch Design Triangle. Llinos Owen continues to develop her textile practice by exploring her personal narratives and subject matters through writing, drawing and tapestry making in her North London studio, creating painting inspired imagery with her textiles materials. 

Llinos Owen’s autobiographical textile practice begins with personal written and visual material from her diary. Diary writing has always been present within the artist’s life, from when she was gifted a journal as a child, constantly drawing, writing and collecting mementos that seemed significant at the time, to today where writing has become a ritualistic practice to process different personal life experiences and vulnerable narratives. In a variety of different ways throughout the artist’s life, diary writing and journaling has always been a creative output and a form of meditation to reflect and process experiences, emotions and thoughts, however the private documentation of these autobiographical experiences, unexpectedly but naturally evolved to be used like a sketchbook, a starting point to her creative process and the main source of inspiration for her textile practice. 

Llinos Owen’s textile practice explores memories, relationships, observations and personal life experiences to create textured tapestries focusing on painting inspired figurative imagery through the technique of punch needle rug hooking. The artist views her tapestries as a form of documentation, a continuation of her diary entires and a visual public form of a private piece of writing that was only written for the artist from the artist. 

The act of making is important to Owen, she views the repetitive and laborious nature of the technique she uses within her practice as an ode to the ritualistic and meditative element of her diary writing. The artist creates tapestries inspired by personal and vulnerable text that was initially written as a way to process her experiences and thoughts, in which this meditative act continues within the act of making. The artist focuses on one piece of work at a time for weeks and sometimes months, slowly growing the imagery stitch by stitch and using her time making to focus on the piece’s context, giving the tapestries an alternative purpose to the artist other than aesthetic, linking the meditative and healing element of her diary writing to her tapestry making. 

Although the artist predominantly works with textile materials, Owen’s creative practice is heavily drawing focused and painting influenced and considers her approach to thinking and making as being very painterly.