Margot Peer

I make work about the digital age, tradition, time and growing up. Recently my work has been exploring the visual intersections of traditional women’s work and the internet through both cross-stitches and accompanying paintings. The pixels in digital images resemble the small square stitches of a cross stitch, despite their differences in histories. Women in my family have been crafting with textiles for ages, including cross-stitching. Through my work I both follow this tradition and alter it by creating photo-realistic cross stitches which transform deeply personal photographs into universally resonant images.

Cross stitching is a laborious and precise craft. Because of it’s intense precision, I work on smaller paintings and drawings at the same time. For each cross stitch I do, there is a series of smaller paintings. These paintings work to change my pace of working and make marks that I cannot do while cross stitching, so they end up being very fast and gestural. 

Overall through both cross stitching and painting I am able to follow historical traditions of women"s work and evolve it’s relatability by depicting photo-real, vulnerable images in relation to the digital age.