Artist: Sarah Laing
2026
Mixed-media embroidery on linen; machine and hand stitching
48 x 36 x 2 in
Worn & Torn is part of my Cathartic Shadows series, exploring the figures that emerge through spontaneous drawing and intuitive stitching. The original embroidered drawing was digitally scanned, repeated, and reassembled, then returned to the physical world through layers of machine and hand embroidery. This movement between digital reproduction and the handmade allows the image to fracture, repeat, and change.
A central figure is surrounded by others who surface and recede like witnesses. Their fragmented presence suggests the complexity of navigating an uncertain world, where identity, vulnerability, and human connection are continually challenged and reshaped. The figures seem simultaneously connected and isolated, occupying a space between recognition and estrangement.
I return to the surface through slow stitching, interrupting the digital repetition and reconnecting its fragments. In Worn & Torn, stitching becomes both disruption and repair: a way of sitting with what I cannot control and, in times like these, trying imperfectly to hold things together.
Artist: Sarah Laing
2026
Mixed-media embroidery on linen; machine and hand stitching
48 x 36 x 2 in
Worn & Torn is part of my Cathartic Shadows series, exploring the figures that emerge through spontaneous drawing and intuitive stitching. The original embroidered drawing was digitally scanned, repeated, and reassembled, then returned to the physical world through layers of machine and hand embroidery. This movement between digital reproduction and the handmade allows the image to fracture, repeat, and change.
A central figure is surrounded by others who surface and recede like witnesses. Their fragmented presence suggests the complexity of navigating an uncertain world, where identity, vulnerability, and human connection are continually challenged and reshaped. The figures seem simultaneously connected and isolated, occupying a space between recognition and estrangement.
I return to the surface through slow stitching, interrupting the digital repetition and reconnecting its fragments. In Worn & Torn, stitching becomes both disruption and repair: a way of sitting with what I cannot control and, in times like these, trying imperfectly to hold things together.
