Gillian Freedman:Gillian "Gilly" Freedman, who has died in Dublin aged 63, was a talented weaver and artist whose work features in major public and private collections in Ireland, Japan and the US.
Born in Dublin to a Jewish family who trace their ancestry to Riga in Latvia and who came to Ireland in the 1840s, she was one of four children of Adrian and Phyllis Cowan and grew up with a strong sense of family values.
The love of art and music was inherited from her father, an amateur artist, and her grandmother, a concert pianist, and Freedman retained cultural and emotional ties to her Jewish background all her life. Her older sister Pam Harris is also a highly regarded painter.
Schooled in Park House and later The Hall in Monkstown (now Rathdown School), she studied fine art at TCD in the late 1960s where her circle included Michael Colgan, Sean Davies and Chris de Burgh.
After graduation, she worked for a time as an au pair for the Baroness Von Thyssen in Austria before deciding to pursue further studies in painting and tapestry weaving at Farnham, West Surrey College of Art Design.
Her early work exhibited in Weavers Guild exhibitions from the 1990s was mostly figurative, but in later years her approach became more abstract, though always inspired by the rhythms and colours of the natural environment.
“She wove like a painter in broad brushstrokes” says her friend, textile designer Liz Nilsson, “and her technique, though based on the traditional Swedish style, was very much her own.” Freedman once said that weaving was a quiet and contemplative activity and that working the strings in the warp was like playing a musical instrument.
She worked from a spacious light-filled studio at the bottom of her garden where her subjects, often everyday objects, were transformed into compositions of great beauty and simplicity.
Her sense of colour and ability to mix low-key shades in a quiet, restrained way was a particular strength. “She was a thorough craftswoman, but she was also inventive and imaginative and used different materials in fascinating and original ways from the wools in her wallpieces and tapestries to the recent innovations combining Japanese paper, silk and lead,” says Frank Buckley, formerly of Imma and the Contemporary Irish Art Society.
Her later work, more three-dimensional in form, was driven by the idea of growth and life-force, and her family recall her fascination with new shoots appearing in the interstices of stone pavements and brickwork, which she photographed endlessly.
Winner of the William Smith O’Brien Perpetual Challenge Cup in 2003, she also took first prize for tufting that year at the RDS crafts competition for the second year running.
Though her work has been exhibited throughout Ireland, in London and the US, she was also an enthusiastic participant in local craft fairs where her large rugs drew great admiration. Modest and unassertive about her work, she had little time for institutions and administrators and simply wanted people to enjoy her pieces. Her most recent exhibition at the Blue Egg gallery in Wexford, which through illness she was unable to attend, had the final accolade of a sell-out.
Married to the well-known physician Dr Derek Freedman in December 1980, they met through their mutual families who had holiday homes in Brittas Bay. Their two sons – Andrew, a film producer, and Michael, an oral surgeon – recall an adoring mother who was vibrant, outgoing, outspoken and impulsive.
She was a devoted wife, a great cook and a talented pianist who loved dancing and who kept an open house for a wide circle of friends. Her first grandchild, Mia, brought her particular happiness in her final days. Wherever she went she made lasting friendships and those who knew and loved her recall a woman of indefatigable energy, generosity and a strong, free spirit.
She is survived by her husband and two sons, sister Pam, brothers David and Peter, and her granddaughter Mia.
Gillian Freedman. Born October 4th, 1949, Died November 10th, 2012