Exploring Simplicity and Stillness in Textiles with Moira Third

Image: Moira Third/ Photography by the artist 

Tell us about your time at Gray’s School of Art?  

Gray’s School of Art in Aberdeen was such a joyous place for me, filled with enthusiastic tutors and a fantastic library to boot. I chose not to study textiles, although I have to say the department was always very appealing, I knew at that point that my interest lay in the fine art department. I had been painting and stitching canvas for a few years with a couple of exhibitions behind me and it was conceptual development that I craved. I studied contemporary sculpture as an undergraduate and enjoyed every moment of my time there, so much so that after my Honours year I stayed on to study on the Masters course.  

I frequently returned to the use of textile techniques and experimented with, amongst other things, latex moulded garments, feather and wool-covered trees not to mention miles of stitched text and soundwaves! There were endless opportunities to investigate methods and materials within the department, and ideas and outcomes were fully explored and critiqued. 

You mention you are influenced by natural beauty, wildlife and the landscape. How does this manifest itself in your creative process? 

I am fortunate to live in an area of outstanding beauty. Wild and remote, the changing seasons are much more apparent here, with geese and migratory birds a transient reminder. A walk up the Glen reveals a landscape to rival a Sir Edwin Landseer painting; furnished with stags, waterfalls, heather moorland, snow-capped mountains and a dramatic loch. Whilst the gentler birch woodlands around my house, and the river which tumbles its way along the bottom of my garden - is a sanctuary for flora and fauna and an invitation to daydream.  

I spend time outdoors, becoming part of this picture as often as I can, but I am aware that it is the human perception of this landscape that interests me most. We still have an irrational fear of the wilderness and more so after dark. When night falls here in the wild, there are no streetlights to illuminate, and moonlight serves to transform the known. Things become shapes and forms, familiar and yet unfamiliar. My stripped back imagery embraces the dreamlike; landscape, animals, birds, objects – not facsimiles of the real thing but a shadow form, devoid of detail, recognisable but changed. 

It would be wrong though to suggest that this is my only influence, I love to read and often the images or emotions conjured up by a line in a novel or poem will strike a chord and act as a starting point for new work. 

The influence and aesthetics of the late artist and printmaker Craigie Aitchison is, I feel, consistently visible in my work; a distillation and repetition of the subject, placed in a spartan landscape brought to life by luminous colour. 

Can you explain what the white hare that is present in your work represents? 

The white hare is very special to me and I’m often asked about its significance in my work. When I lost my hearing after a viral infection, I struggled to cope with the changes it forced upon me. A close encounter with a winter coated mountain hare during a terrible snowstorm going over Glenshee, reminded me that change was a natural thing, and that transformation was critical to adapting in order to survive. 

So the white hare, for me, has become an analogy for transformation, adaptability, change and something which is comfortable in its changing environment. 

Other animals and birds have made it onto the canvas now too, and they all come with their own symbolic references, not to mention objects, in particular chairs and vases all loaded with meaning and associations.