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Inspired by her uncle, William Mason, a textile and wallpaper printer in the 1960s, Ingrid followed in his footsteps… even inheriting his printing screens. She began her own business in the mid 1980s creating designs for sale and original one-off commissions. The patterns found their way from tea towels to bedspreads, curtains to upholstery. Ingrid loves the way that interior fabrics are both beautiful in design and cloth, and useful in everyday life. Even now in this era of digital processing there has been a resurgence of hand-crafted items unique in character and design with the beauty of irregularities patterned on the natural world.
Filed along the wall of Ingrid’s studio at CEAC are swatches of bold patterned fabrics of designs developed over the years. These designs could be described as modernist with abstract geometric patterns. Ingrid uses a paper collage of stencilled cut-outs or photographic images, pencils and paint to map out the designs, but her ideas come through the process of printing and working directly on the cloth.
Most recently, Ingrid’s work has been influenced by Marimekko, Finnish designers and modern Scandinavian designs. She enjoys their simplicity. She has also been influenced by cave paintings at Pech-Merle, les Combarelles and Rouffignac in Southern France, the architecture and textile design of the 1950’s, and the art of Sonia Delaunay and Henri Matisse. A fascination with the tapa cloth of Polynesia began with her research in the British Museum while studying at the Central School of Art in London for the Post Graduate Diploma in Textile Design.
In between her work with textiles and time with her family, Ingrid teaches English to adult refugees. She holds an MA in English literature. A West Aucklander, Ingrid is very much at home in the Waitakeres and the community of artists at CEAC.
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