Featured artist
Victoria Rose Richards

Born in Plymouth, Devon, in 1998, Victoria didn’t begin her art journey as an aerial embroidery artist but instead as a biology student needing a break. After beginning a BSc in biological sciences at Exeter university in 2016, she later began using embroidery as a distraction and a way to destress while studying for her courses. She made her first embroidery landscape in October 2018 and began focusing more and more on her art over the next 6 months.

Once completing her course in June 2019, Victoria had great problems finding appropriate work that would utilise her biology degree – the mix of her Autism meaning she couldn’t travel far from her rural home and struggling in social situations outside of studies, plus rising house prices stopping her relocating, made things very hard and she chose to focus on creating her art full time for a while instead.

The next month, she fell into aerial embroidery almost by chance. While working on a smaller sewing project on creating monochrome landscapes with each colour of the colour wheel, she had issues finding a subject for the colour green… until she noticed the fields and woodland visible from her bedroom window would be monochrome green from above. After making this small piece for the series, she trialled it out on a large 8-inch landscape and fell in love with the concept! The mix of textures and stitches needed, the curious shapes fields form both naturally and are made to form by man, how rivers can cut right through, how humans and nature seem to slot together so well intrigued her creatively. From the summer of 2019 onwards, Victoria has focussed almost solely on aerial view embroidery.

Due to the happiness she found from creating, combined with the positive reception of her art online, Victoria began focusing on building a long-term art career. The next couple of years were spent experimenting more with the concept. One of the favourites of both hers and her audience became the bright colours of her tulip landscapes, depicting the multicoloured rows in orderly fields (and often mixed with other aspects like lakes and rivers). Victoria overall bases her landscapes on the Devon countryside where she grew up as she’s constantly surrounded by inspiration from it.

In Autumn 2020, Victoria tried introducing a topographical element to her embroidery for the first time – by layering the felt base, she produced a gentle 3D hill design. Later that year, she also tried adding felted wool as a fog effect and made a 3D tropical island oceanscape the next year. Since then, she has continued to experiment and play with aspects of her aerial embroidery to keep testing herself and learning new skills. She finally completed her largest project to date in October 2022, an 18-inch piece mixing moorland elements with agricultural ones.

Going into 2023, Victoria plans to start expanding the subjects of her aerial embroidery and focusing on recreating landscapes from other areas of the world too. She hopes to continue her art for as long as she loves creating it!

more. www.victoriaroserichards.co.uk