Multi-disciplinary designer Janine Partington’s recent work in leather explores mark making through the carving and painting of leathers to create distinctive and appealing surfaces. She is helping to close the gap between contemporary design and craft and contemporary art by showing a new way of exploring a very old material – leather.
The simplicity of the process is important to Janine and she is working in as handmade a way as possible – “just me, a piece of leather, some lino tools and acrylic paint”. Janine has spent the past two years creating a distinctive visual language in her new chosen medium – experimenting with marks, composition and colour, playing with form and layering.
Janine loves the freedom of working instinctively, each mark responding to the presence of what has come before. The majority of her work is wall-based art works, but she has also created furniture, vessels and jewellery showing the versatility of her technique.
Janine was selected for our 20th anniversary project: read her interview.
