Creation: A Celebration

Creation: A Celebration depicts the story of Genesis in a stunningly beautiful and imaginative combination of painting and needlework. It is not so much a religious work as an evocation of a colourful story to which Sue Symons has applied her skills in painting, needlework and design to reveal the beauty and wonder of creation as an ongoing process. The painted texts from Chapters 1 and 2 of Genesis, using the poetic King James translation, are highly decorated and illuminated. These pages are interspersed with others containing a rich melange of illustrative artwork depicting the great variety of plants, animals and insects with whom we share this wonderful creation - 112 different butterflies are illustrated on the endpapers. Sue Symons devoted two years to completing the project which has over forty panels, all but one containing central panels which are painted, with borders of hand and machine stitched needlework. The first public display of the artwork from which this book is produced took place in September and October 2009 in Bath Abbey, the home of the Bath Abbey Diptychs, her earlier work.