Friday Feature Artist

Memphis-based abstract painter Hamlett Dobbins creates paintings full of colour, pattern and movement, each beginning with a small, everyday memory of whole-body pleasure. Breaking those moments into shape, rhythm and colour, he returns to them in the studio again and again. In this conversation, Hamlett explores how an experience becomes an artwork, the role of drawing, and why finding your voice...

What is tufting, which tufting gun should you buy, and why isn't your tufting gun working?  Take Two Course Creator Tara Axford and Content Manager Nicola Rough answer your most-asked tufting questions.  With clips from Kerri Hollingsworth's previously unreleased course interview and US tufting artist Melissa Monroe, they explore what tufting is, how to choose a tufting gun, why your fra...

Rhode Island collage artist and printmaker Sarah Z Short gives discarded books and paper ephemera a second life. Printing with vintage wooden type chosen for its shape rather than its words, she cuts and layers rescued pages into bold, abstract compositions. This conversation explores working with repurposed materials, building from the grid, and the happy accident that sparked her boro-inspired s...

What happens when we let go of perfection and give ourselves permission to experiment? Join Angela and ceramic artist Juz Kitson as they explore creative reinvention, impermanence and the joy of breaking the rules. From extraordinary sculptural installations to her new online course, Curious Matter , Juz shares how curiosity can shake up your practice, alongside practical insights into what studen...

New York City based mixed media artist, instructor, author and designer Seth Apter shares how a chance gallery visit and years of handmade mail art turned a psychologist into a full-time artist. Known for richly layered, textural work built from thread, found objects and vintage ephemera, Seth reflects on community, creative generosity, and why every artist is always one layer away from magic. Vis...

Croatian-born, Chicago-based artist Ana Zanic embraces watercolour as a spontaneous, layered practice built from washes, drawn marks and a loose, improvisational hand. Her series, including Migration, made around her US citizenship, explore movement, memory and identity. In this conversation, Ana talks about accidental burn marks discovered with her son, working at scale, and how becoming a mother...

Congolese-born, Cape Town-based artist Patrick Bongoy transforms reclaimed rubber inner tubes into intricately woven sculptures confronting histories of extraction, displacement and survival. A 2024 LOEWE Foundation Craft Prize finalist now representing the DRC at the 2026 Venice Biennale, Patrick reflects on his family's early resistance to his path, the enduring legacy of Congo's rubbe...

French Canadian textile artist Catherine-Marie Longtin, based in South London, builds quilts and stretched fabric artworks from collected linens and solids, favouring analogous colour and hand-pieced geometry over pattern and print. A former academic, she left that career in 2008 and has just published a book exploring 100 variations of the traditional log cabin block. In this conversation, Cather...

Dutch, London-based artist Anne von Freyburg creates large-scale textile paintings that reimagine Rococo portraiture in hand-sewn tapestry, sequins and PVC fabric. In this conversation, she unpacks the hierarchy between painting and textile, why pleasure and excess are acts of resistance, and the six-month process behind her recent Saatchi Gallery installation. Anne also previews Pleasure Garden,...

Melbourne-based repair artist Erin Lewis-Fitzgerald mends clothes with visible, playful stitching that turns holes into design features rather than flaws. Once called "a tattoo artist for clothes," she teaches darning and mending and is the author of her book Modern Mending , now in its third printing. In this conversation, Erin shares stories of sentimental repairs, the philosophy of &q...

Austin, Texas-based textile artist Irene Roderick creates bold, improvisational quilts, building each piece outward from a single scrap of fabric pinned to her design wall. After decades as a painter, she discovered quilting at 66 and never looked back, developing her signature Dancing With the Wall method. In this conversation, Irene reflects on identity, resilience after a health crisis that too...

Memphis-based fiber artist Paula Kovarik creates layered quilted and sculptural works by cutting up her own quilts and repurposing them as raw material. Her practice channels memory, politics and the news cycle into stitch and line, favouring process over finished product. In this conversation, she reflects on her evolving 3D work, a recent Japan residency, and the day she took a chainsaw to a pie...

Cornwall-based ceramicist Craig Underhill creates slab-built forms that blur the line between sculpture and vessel, their surfaces layered with marks and colour drawn straight from the Cornish coastline. In this conversation, Craig reflects on thirty-five years of practice, sketchbooks, glazes, and a brand new body of work that has him immersing raw, unfired clay in the sea to see what the tide gi...

Natural fibre artist Alice Fox discusses her process-led practice – working with rust, plant dyes, foraged fibres and hand-bound books shaped by materials found and grown. A former nature conservationist, she describes turning her allotment into an ongoing residency, exploring self-sufficiency in art materials. This conversation covers sustainability, self-publishing, and letting the properties of...

Visual artist and bookmaker Sarah Grace Dye discusses her practice of transforming discarded materials – avocado skins, kitchen roll, family letters – into artists' books and keepsakes. Working from a small studio in Frankfurt, she shares her approach to papermaking, folding and storytelling through texture and touch. This conversation explores loss, memory, sustainability, and the quiet disc...

British textile artist Gizella Warburton discusses her sculptural vessel forms – shadowed, scratched, stitched, bound and burnt into being. Drawing on printed and woven textile training, she describes making as a visceral, intuitive process guided by feel rather than a fixed plan. This conversation explores balance, containment, and how landscape, light and ritual shape a practice built on patienc...

Danish-born textile artist Jette Clover reflects on four decades of art quiltmaking – from curating Europe's first art quilt exhibitions to creating intimate, text-based collages of paper, cloth and paint. Now based in Antwerp, she discusses her daily fifteen-minute collage ritual, her fascination with weathered city walls and handwriting, and the restraint she calls "a little lipstick&q...

American collage and installation artist Clare Celeste Börsch, based in Berlin, creates immersive works from found and open-source naturalist illustrations, exploring biodiversity, memory and loss. In this conversation, she traces her evolution from paper collage to large-scale installation, and speaks candidly about motherhood, climate anxiety, and learning to value her work as her practice has g...

Kerri Hollingsworth is a fibre artist and furniture upholsterer based in regional Victoria. Surrounded by nature, it finds its way into every piece she makes. In this conversation, Kerry talks about her new course, Threads of Connection – exploring what it means to teach intuition, work with salvaged materials, and trust that creativity is not something you find, but something you unlock. Visit ou...

Donna Watson is a professional mixed media artist with over 45 years of practice, known for work that explores memory, identity, and the passage of time. In this conversation with Angela Truscott, Donna reflects on two decades of painting for sales before finding her own voice, and shares why helping artists go deeper into who they are has become the most meaningful work of her career. Visit our w...

Vietnamese–American artist Kenny Nguyen creates sculptural paintings that blur the boundaries between textile, painting and form. Working with torn silk soaked in pigment, his practice explores memory, migration and transformation. In this conversation, Kenny reflects on material sensitivity, cultural identity, and the quiet courage it takes to deconstruct and rebuild – both in art and in life. Vi...

Emily Stubbs is a contemporary British ceramicist based in York, whose vessels begin not with clay, but with paper. Drawing on collage, monoprinting, and an instinct for bold colour and graphic contrast, Emily builds fragmented, layered vessels that are entirely her own. This conversation explores the crossover between two-dimensional thinking and three-dimensional making – and what it means to wo...

Nicola Bennett is a New Zealand painter, galleried artist, and teacher whose abstract work draws from the colours, textures, and sensory pleasures of the edible world. In this conversation, Nicola shares how flavour and felt experience become the doorway into abstract painting – and how repetition, mark making, and a willingness to stay with uncertainty are what ultimately reveal your own unmistak...

In this special 200th episode, the Take Two team steps back to reflect on the voices, insights and patterns woven through years of artist interviews. Drawing from a rich archive of conversations across textile and fibre practices, they explore the inner critic, the messy middle, and the search for authentic voice – offering a rare, collective portrait of what it truly means to live a creative life...

Sarah Brayer is a Kyoto-based artist working across painting, woodblock printmaking, and washi papermaking. Her practice explores light, impermanence, and the inner life through meditative mark-making. In this conversation, she reflects on four decades of integrating meditation with art-making and the launch of her course, Art as Meditation. The episode offers a quiet, considered look at how still...