"What gives me encouragement to continue to use my family as inspiration is that, if you look back in history, the famous portraits that Van Gogh did are portraits of people he knew, the postman or his friends. Intimate friends that, once you get that distance of time, you don't think, 'Well, this is someone he knew and that's kind of boring. It's portrait, in and of itself."
""A line is a line, whether it's wool or oil," says Zavaglia, who was trained as a painter. "The art world is finally embracing it. They're breaking down this hierarchy of art and craft.""
"She sees people who don't like figurative work as a challenge. How can she stop them at a show, attract their eyes for longer, make them take one or two steps closer with the question: What exactly is that?"
Cayce Zavaglia, a fifty-year-old mother of four in the Midwest, uses an anti-Instagram aesthetic and painterly training to create realistic embroidered portraits. She treats line and composition consistently across mediums, bridging painting and fiber by rendering faces in thread that blur the boundary between string and paint. Rising institutional and market interest in fiber art, buoyed by figures like Sheila Hicks, Brent Wadden, and Anni Albers, has reduced stigma around textile work. Zavaglia draws on intimate subjects—family and friends—employing meticulous technique, including single-strand DMC floss and pointillist patience, to compel viewers to look closer.
Read at Hi-Fructose Magazine - The New Contemporary Art Magazine
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