Turkey Track Quilt c. 1941

Catherine Fowler made this quilt, Turkey Track Quilt, at an unknown date with fabric and thread. I’m drawn to the way the geometric shapes play against each other in this design, it reminds me that artmaking is often about finding a rhythm and a structure and then letting intuition fill it in. Look at the interplay between the pink and the green, and how those colours make our eyes jump and stutter across the surface. You can almost feel the texture of the fabric through the image, even the stitching is visible. Each little stitch or line feels like an individual mark, but they come together to create this larger pattern. It’s about process, the repetition and accumulation of tiny gestures coming together to make something bigger. This piece calls to mind the work of contemporary artists like Faith Ringgold, who also use the format of the quilt to tell stories and play with form. Quilts like this one show us that art can come from anywhere, and that the act of creation is something deeply human and universal.