Jo Budd - Textile Artist

Jo Budd’s love affair with textiles started when she was a student studying painting at the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne where she discovered the traditional quilts of Northern Britain and the United States. She was immediately inspired by their warmth of texture, scale and richness of colour. Since then she as used textiles exclusively to express her love of landscape and her surroundings and has had an innovative career using fabrics and dyes in a unique and experimental way that has been acclaimed by professional quiltmakers, embroiderers and artists alike.

Jo has exhibited widely throughout the UK and now has an international reputation, having shown in Germany and Japan, and her work is well-known throughout publications on textile art. She has work in major public collections including the Bank of Switzerland, BT and The Embroiderers’ Guild, as well as in numerous private collections. She has completed several major commissions, including a series of large works for Bedford Hospital in 1996. Jo has received awards from Northern Arts and the British Crafts Council.

Born in East Anglia, Jo has spent ten years in Newcastle and the following twelve years in her native county, in both rural and seaside settings. Although it may appear abstract, all Jo’s work has a figurative basis in her immediate surroundings, and is linked by the common thread of her passion for colour and texture.