Carne Griffiths’ love of drawing stems from childhood when he was constantly with a pencil in his hand. His distinctive delicate and expressive style of mark-making, clearly influenced by artists such as Leonardo Da Vinci and Paul Klee, has developed from a twelve-year London-based career as an embroidery designer after leaving art school, where he produced elaborate hand drawn embroidery designs for prestigious clients such as HRH the Prince of Wales, The Sultan of Oman, Ralph Lauren, Tom Ford, Asprey, Chanel, Burberry and many of London’s Savile Row tailors, as well as for films The Last King of Scotland, Valkyrie, The Phantom of the Opera and costume embroidery design for the musical Wicked.
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Wanting to concentrate more on his personal work as an artist, in January 2009 Griffiths produced a collection of automatic drawings for his first solo show entitled ‘The Seer’ in Leytonstone’s 491 Gallery. The drawings, based upon the automatic process, revisited his former influences, were a departure from the formality of embroidery design and consequently re-ignited his passion for art, and he went on to create a project called 100sqft, where artists, both established and emerging were brought together to show their work alongside each other in a group exhibition. In his first collection of drawings since his departure from the embroidery world, Griffiths gathers together the influences from his previous work and seeks to develop his style of drawing. The Harvest collection, which features ‘Rose’, references the work of old masters and explores the freedom of the drawn line. There is a desire to return to nature and the simpler things in life within this series, yet within the flowing lines of foliage the chaos of everyday life pervades.
Born in Liverpool in 1973, Griffiths studied Illustration at Maidstone college of Art in 1992 and after graduating was made a fellow of the college in 1995 with contemporary Dan Baldwin, which lead to them later curating the ‘Shynola’ exhibition at Islington’s Candid Arts Gallery in 1996. He lives and works in London.