’Asta Kristinsdóttir WathenFelt Portraits

A selection of portraits in felt by the Icelandic artist ’Asta Kristinsdóttir Wathen (1940–2000). Each felt is about half a metre high. They are mostly of friends of ’Asta’s from Deià, Mallorca. A couple of close-up details are reproduced at the end of the gallery. Photographs by Sunna Wathen. Click on the pictures to see them larger.

Cecily Sheridan

Bruce Wallace

Fernando Maza

Francisca Heine

Carmen Graves

Jim McKinley

Angela

Eye detail

Felt

She makes a mat
of fibres, layers-
thick, pressed, depict
a face she cares

to know. To show
a friend, her built-
up filmy webs
waver and tilt

out of true when
wetted, flattened,
to likeness more
true in the end,

allowing lines
life’s variance.
She wants “Central
Ueropeans”,

as she puts it,
to portray, some
Ur-people whose
faces ripple

and merge, emerge,
wink and perish
from these fond French,
Germans, Irish.

She jokes but seeks
to do good works
in this technique
learned from the Turks.

Her Icelandic
face at fifty
keeps growing its
changing beauty.

John Gibbens
from Characters: You & I

 

Juan Graves

Dai Griffiths

Herman Makkink

Tio Toni

Tommas Graves

Pepe Salas

Marc Heine

Mouth detail