Annie Taylor creates illustrative textile works from the twilight realm of fairy tales, where mermaids and fairy folk flirt with carnies and Kahlos, and where behind the stitched smile there is often a darker tale.

 

Known locally as The Mermaid Lady, it is no surprise one features on her #stitched-up-by- Barclays embroidery. A mermaid worrying about the Earth, about her home and future. Mermaids care about the water, about the rubbish and plastic waste.  Mermaids worry about the damage caused by those whose only care is profits. 

 

Mostly working with materials that are pre-loved, reused, recycled and repurposed, Annie Taylor turns old bedding into dolls, larger than life characters with stories to tell. Since accidentally co-creating the Profanity Embroidery Group in 2014, embroidery and textiles have slowly pushed other materials aside and her work is predominantly stitched illustration, sitting somewhere between 2D and 3D. She has made one stop-motion animation and dreams of creating working textile automata.

 

Having failed to enter art school as a teenager (apparently shorthand and typing are not helpful qualifications) she shelved her dreams of being a costume designer and spent the next 20 years utilising those unwanted secretarial skills for unexpectedly interesting jobs - including for the fashion designer Zandra Rhodes and The Guardian Women’s Page. 

 

Eventually her hands just stopped working. She apologised to them, to herself, and promised to set them free. 

 

By 2005 she had completed an Applied Arts degree with a museum project about a derelict house.  When the house was demolished, the spell was broken, and she ran away to the seaside, to the mermaids, and never looked back.

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Co-founder/bossy boots of the Profanity Embroidery Group

Member of the Society for Embroidered Work