Naomi Kendall

"My work is mainly focused around cutting, folding, layering and weaving paper by hand. I love working in colour, but I also make monochrome work and add my own marks or textures to the paper with inks and paints. I’m inspired by many things: the collections I draw while exploring museums, colourful textiles, ceramics, architecture and the small corners of the world I have explored. My tools are simple: a pencil, a ruler, a knife, a pair of scissors and some glue.

I first started working with paper when I was at art school where I made large scale paper sculptures. After a career in galleries and community arts I decided to focus again on my own practice. On returning to paper as a material I started making small, three dimensional folded pieces inspired by the shapes of every-day objects. My work evolved as I started to layer and weave these forms.

I aim to make pieces which are beautiful objects, by which I mean they are decorative and intricate and made with care and precision. I set out to push the possibilities of working with paper to create pieces of artwork which surprise and to a degree puzzle the viewer.

My aesthetic is clean and geometric and I love exploring the possibilities of shape and colour. I’m fascinated by repetition and pattern and my drawings dig into these ideas and feed back into my work with paper. The artist Jaume Plensa said about drawing: “Drawing is an incredible laboratory where you can develop intuitions. Drawing is a place for freedom” and I couldn’t agree more.

I’m currently exploring printmaking and how I might incorporate this new technique into my practice. I’m interested in increasing the scale of my work and bringing some of the three dimensional elements back from my early pieces."

Website: Naomi J Kendall - Paper Artist

Gallery images (from left)

• Delta
• Gyre
• Latitude - detail 
• Latitude - full image
• Strata - detail 
• Binca
• Meadow