Brenda Duddington
Brenda Duddington was born and grew up in Beckenham, Kent, and is a student at Silai for Skills. She studied Textile Art, Craft and Design with tutor Teresa Searle. Brenda spent many years working as a social worker, and over the last few years art has started to play a greater role in her life.
"I got ill with a virus and never recovered from it. Diagnosis of ME, and never able to get back to social work. So there was a lot of loss with that, a lot of loss of identity, a loss of me. My doctor said something quite amazing to me, he said, "You have to re-invent yourself," and I really heard those words. Although the journey through the chronic fatigue and ME was terrible for a couple of years, there's always a silver lining, there's always an open door somewhere. And I think most experiences, however awful they might be, can be turned on their head into something positive...and within that was an opportunity for me to go into the art world.
I enrolled at Silai and there was this fantastic tutor, doing these amazing things with us, really wacky stuff, not conventional sewing, it was all very creative, it was all very unusual. We did things like paper making, felting, indigo dyeing, using the sewing machine as a drawing instrument which I'd never heard of before. If you give me bowl of fruit or a plant to draw you won't get an image. But art doesn't only mean drawing, there are all sorts of ways of being artistic and creative, and I've found a way."
