Painted and Stitched Portraits Inspired by the Indigenous People of Chile

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Trav­el is at the heart of embroi­dery artist Katy Biele. Chilean-born and now Cana­da-based, she spent four years explor­ing and liv­ing in dif­fer­ent coun­tries; south-east Asia is where she fell in love with tex­tiles and began her for­ay into embroi­dery. Since that time, she’s cre­at­ed float­ing gar­dens and vibrant flo­ral arrange­ments in the hoop. Her most recent series is a depar­ture from those past sub­jects and revolve around paint­ed and embroi­dered por­traits of people.

Katy stud­ied the Yaganes, an indige­nous peo­ple of Chile, as inspi­ra­tion for her work.  In small, four inch-hoops, Katy illus­trates the por­traits of the last Yaganes ladies. She high­lights their paint­ed facial mark­ings with thick thread and uses her sig­na­ture tac­tile plants to cre­ate tex­ture and sug­gest an environment.

Katy sells her work on her web­site. You can also buy some of her work as instant-down­load embroi­dery pat­terns on Etsy.

The Yaganes women aren’t Katy’s only embroidered portraits. She’s released finished a couple of others.