Gyllian Thomson graduated from Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art with a Bachelor of Design in Constructed Textiles and Printmaking in 1995. She earned a Post Graduate Certificate in Education in Art and Design from the University of Glasgow in 2001. Having swapped Glasgow for the countryside of Dumfries and Galloway, her studio is attached to her home, making her responses to the landscape even more immediate.
Thomson’s work is a response to a mediated view of the land and sea. She uses colour and shape to communicate tacit stillness and absences. What begins as paper and paint is woven onto a scaffold loom. This slow and tactile process translates moods within the landscape, forces above and below which one cannot see but can only feel. A line continuing like a path with no end, falling into the horizon or falling off the earth, is traced in wool, cotton, linen, plastics, and silk. These materials lend the work depth and variety of lustres and surfaces, while also reflecting the materials found in the artist's immediate surroundings. Limited only by the size of her loom, Thomson continues a time-honoured tradition of independent weavers producing art in the same way for thousands of years.
