First of all, Victoria told us more about her background: “I was brought up and still live in Southwest Devon, UK. My home was in a relatively rural village surrounded by farmland, wild areas, and rivers, but I moved to a local town in 2024, which borders Dartmoor. I’ve loved being creative from a young age – I remember being in my early teens messing around with balsa wood to make models, sewing toys, and experimenting with different paints from even younger! I went through phases of painting, graphite drawing, and multi-media before focusing more on my studies in my late teens.
When I was 20 at university, I fell back into creating as a hobby and then it became my job when I completed my degree. I feel my experience being autistic has really influenced my artistic journey – I’ve always had issues connecting to people and so preferred my own company, spending hours each day in my room focusing on little details of whatever I was creating, even when I was in primary school. I think it’s given me a certainly creative eye and attention to detail I wouldn’t otherwise have.”
We were wondering what initially drew her to the world of embroidery, to which she replied: “I began embroidery as a whole back in 2018 after looking for something to spend my free time on at university – I was experiencing a lot of lows and stress from the work and thought something creative would help as I’ve always had a love for art. I stumbled across some embroidery landscapes online and was fascinated by the medium! I got my grandmother’s old tin of threads out, had a play, and created my first one… then I never stopped!”
Victoria shared that she has always had more of a connection to nature and the land around her rather than to people. That, coupled with growing up in a place of outstanding natural beauty, made it feel completely natural for her to focus on landscapes.
We asked Victoria to share more about her creative process. She wrote: “The landscapes I create are often from my imagination. A key part of my creative process is that I do little planning or sketching for most of my pieces; instead, it is much more intuitive. A field-based piece for example – I start with the trees first, deciding as I go what shape I want them to form. When I’ve done the majority, I sketch out the rough field shapes, then decide whether I want a more formal or randomly structured landscape. Once I’m happy with that, I decide what they’ll be! I don’t know until I’m most the way through what I’m actually making, and I love that.”
As for the audience's takeaway, Victoria wrote what are her hopes: “An appreciation for the natural world! I think anyone at all would benefit from getting immersed in nature and that the world would be a better place if we could all connect back to nature in our own way.”
Lastly, she added: “If you want to get creating art too – don’t be afraid of failing or get put off when your early art doesn’t come out how you want! We all started somewhere, and I had to make some bad pieces before I could make the good ones.”
