The Very Mention of Home features a series of 22 hooked rugs from the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia’s Permanent Collection, created by one of Nova Scotia’s most celebrated rug hookers, Deanne Fitzpatrick. Each of these rugs was created in 2016 and are being exhibited together for the first time. The colourful and vibrant scenes depicting Maritime geography and architecture, illustrate the artist’s relationship with, and ideas about, the notion of home. Fitzpatrick’s remarkable ability to tell a story shines through her work, offering an important link between contemporary craft and her personal vision of home. This collection highlights Fitzpatrick’s expressive imagery and vibrant colour choices, with each work drawing us towards our complex relationships between “home” and “away”.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Deanne Fitzpatrick is a fabric artist, rug hooker, and writer based in Amherst, Nova Scotia. She is widely recognized as one of the world’s prominent modern rug hookers.
Fitzpatrick was born in Placentia Bay, Newfoundland, and began making hooked rugs in 1990. Completely self-taught, she uses rug hooking as a means of storytelling and finds inspiration for her work from observation and memories of her own experiences. Fitzpatrick’s artwork is widely collected, and her fibre arts can be found in the permanent collections of the Canadian Museum of History, the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, the Nova Scotia Art Bank, and The Rooms.
