This Textile Artist Uses Photography to Capture the Layers of Memory and Place
In The Scenic Route, artist Adrienna Matzeg stitches the magic of the Maritimes
With her latest collection, The Scenic Route, Toronto-based textile artist Adrienna Matzeg captures the fleeting magic of summer road trips to Canada’s East Coast. The six embroidered works, presented by Tacit Collective, are love letters to the in-between—those half-remembered, half-felt moments that surface long after the drive is over. Drawing from her own travel photography, Matzeg distills these scenes into textile compositions, transforming snapshots of landscapes and roadside impressions into richly textured fibre art.
Artist Adrienna Matzeg in her home studio.
For Matzeg, this collection is as personal as it is artistic. Last summer, she returned to Nova Scotia, where she once lived, revisiting familiar places with fresh eyes. “Going back, everything felt so much more special,” she recalls. “Even on the plane ride home, I was sketching ideas on my iPad.” That impulse—to capture the essence of a place before it fades—is central to her practice. Her pieces are not just representations of landscape or objects, but attempts to hold onto the texture of memory itself.
Catch of the Day, Adrienna Matzeg.
Her creative process is meticulous, blending digital precision with the softness of textiles. “Before I even start stitching, I carefully plan my compositions in Illustrator, down to the millimetre,” she explains. The result is a seamless marriage of graphic design, photography and fibre art—each piece a carefully composed moment, distilled and reimagined in punch needle embroidery. Catch of the Day, for instance, recreates the checkered basket of a freshly fried meal, a direct translation of a personal photograph. “How do you make fried food look good in thread?” she laughs. “It was one of the hardest things I’ve done.” The technical challenge was worth it. The piece, like the collection, pulses with warmth and familiarity.
By intersecting photography and textile art, Matzeg honours the East Coast through her own lens.
Though she hadn’t initially considered her connection to the region’s fibre arts traditions, her trip made her see her work in a new light. “We stopped at these small roadside studios where artists were making incredible felting, rug hooking and quilting work,” she says. “I started to wonder—was I influenced by this without realizing it?” That unconscious thread now feels intentional, a way of honouring the East Coast through her own lens. Her pieces, with their bold colours and cropped compositions, echo the handcrafted landscapes she encountered on her trip.
Lighthouse Route, Adrienna Matzeg.
In The Scenic Route, she experiments with colour blending, adding soft gradients to skies and subtle tonal shifts to elements like the golden amber of beer foam. Even the direction of each stitch is carefully considered to reflect light in just the right way. “Textile art is something you need to see in person to truly appreciate—the texture, the stitch direction, how the light hits it,” she says. While digital platforms have brought her international recognition, she’s eager to create more in-person experiences, showing work in galleries and fairs where viewers can engage with its tactile depth.
At The Lookoff, Adrienna Matzeg.
At The Lookoff, Adrienna Matzeg.
Lick A Treat, Adrienna Matzeg.
Lick A Treat, Adrienna Matzeg.
The Afterglow, Adrienna Matzeg.
The Afterglow, Adrienna Matzeg.
Matzeg’s partnership with Tacit Collective has been instrumental in her artistic journey. Her first collection with the gallery sold out in a month, and she has found a strong community among its network of women artists. “The support and visibility they provide is incredible,” she says. That resonance has extended beyond galleries; she recently collaborated with Paper Collective in Denmark to create a series of high-quality prints, making her work more accessible to a global audience. “Some artists have mixed feelings about prints, but coming from photography, it makes perfect sense to me,” she says. “The prints allow the originals to live on.”
With The Scenic Route, Adrienna Matzeg doesn’t just depict landscapes—she preserves the feeling of a place in time. Her work reminds us that a destination is more than geography; it’s the scent of salt in the air, the glint of light off a diner counter, the hum of a song half-heard through an open window. It’s the quiet weight of a memory, held close, long after the journey ends.
