Rosemary Burd
Vancouver, BC
ARTIST BIO
Rosemary Burd is an emerging, if late-blooming, Vancouver artist who found her artistic voice during the pandemic. Her series of embroidered photographs developed from the integration of two very different practices: the energetic manipulation of the came as she uses intentional camera movement to capture an image, and the calm, repetitive movement of the needle in her hand-stitching as she embroiders the resulting streaks of light and colour with silk thread. Rosemary is self-taught in both photography and embroidery.
Rosemary’s first embroidered photos were included in Propeller Gallery’s 2021 Contact Photography Festival Virtual Exhibition, Altered Images by Hand. Since then, she has exhibited her photo-based work in group shows in Vancouver (Pendulum Gallery, Firehall Arts Centre, and Il Museo at the Italian Cultural Centre), on Vancouver Island ( Cowichan Valley Arts Council, Duncan, and Pat Martin Bates Gallery, Victoria), and in Madeira Park, BC (Fibreworks Gallery). In the fall of 2023, Rosemary was curated into a two-person show at the Kay Meek Arts Centre, West Vancouver. She is scheduled to have her first solo show at the Old Schoolhou Gallery in Qualicum Beach, BC, in 2026. Rosemary’s embroidered photographs have been published in PhotoEd Magazine (Digital Extra, Spring/Summer Issue, 2024) and in The Hand magazine (Issue 42, October, 2023).
PROJECT STATEMENT
When I walk in the Gulf Island forests I love, I am fascinated by the interplay of light I observe as sunlight streams through branches of arbutus, firs, maples. On a bank above the ocean, arbutus trees are dappled orange and mauve by the evening sun. In the da shadows of an evergreen forest, a ray of sun reaches the forest floor and shatters into pinks and greens. A grove of big leaf map trees shimmers chartreuse and gold as light filters through their leaves. The Japanese word, komorebi, describes this phenomena as light ‘leaking through trees’.
This series of embroidered photographs are my attempt at capturing this constantly shifting light. These are not still photographs - they embody a glimpse, not a gaze. You might be standing still in the midst of these trees, but nothing is really still: your eyes flick across the scene as you detect the flutter of a leaf, or catch a shifting ray of light from the corner of your eye.
While I am drawn to the play of light I observe, the scenes that I photograph are often unremarkable on their own. Yet, when captured using intentional camera movement, they become something more. As the scenes blur, the light, the colours, and the shadows are intensified. Animated by the repetitive lines that cut across them, the images appear more vibrant. And as I begin embroider each image, the scenes become something more again. My stitches amplify each line, and the luminous silk thread glows against the matte paper, and shimmers against the shadows. The final pieces, embroidered for hours, are redolent of memory, and an intense connection to place.
