Tab, congratulations on your feature at RAINBOW STUDIOS. How do you feel seeing these pieces in the space?

I’m such a fan of Rainbow Studios and everything they do. It’s a huge honour to have my work hanging on their hallowed walls.

For anyone new to your practice, what is this body of work about in a sentence of two?

This new body of work explores people and faces, treating wool as if it were paint. It marks a shift from my usual focus on lettering, allowing a more expressive approach to form and texture. Each piece experiments with colour, depth, and movement, using three different tufting guns and shearers to create a dimensional finish.

Can you walk us through your process?

I always begin with a sketch—sometimes sparked by something I’ve seen, other times by something I’ve heard, with music being a big source of inspiration. I draw everything in Procreate and experiment with colour there. The tufting process requires careful planning before diving in; the backing can only handle so many changes, so I have to start each piece with a clear vision of the final look. 

Colour feels central in tufting. How did you build the palette for these works?

Colour is always what I fixate on most. I’m dictated to by the colours I can source. It’s not like paint, I can’t just mix something new when I need it [well until I take on hand dying but that is for another day]. I was having this exact battle one day, staring at my wall of yarn, when it occurred to me to start treating it more like paint. Throw colours together, shoot two different shades at once, move through tones. These three pieces became part of that exploration—an experiment in what it might look like if wool behaved more like paint