These amazing portraits are all created with embroidery. For each artwork, what you see here is, the front and back of the same embroidery. Cayce Zavaglia is an Australian artist, who originally trained as a painter, but switched to embroidery a few years ago. The work is all hand sewn using cotton and silk thread or embroidery wool.

She says: “A few years ago, I turned one of my embroideries over and for the first time saw the possibilities of a new image and path for my work that had been with me in the studio for so long but had gone unnoticed.  It was the presence of another portrait that visibly was so different from the meticulously sewn front image…but perhaps more psychologically profound.  The haphazard beauty found in this verso image created a haunting contrast to the front image and was a world of loose ends, knots, and chaos that could easily translate into the world of paint.”  

She then decided to return to painting and trying to render these very interesting “reverse” images.

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