This scarf design was commissioned by the Glasgow-based design studio Briggs and Cole for the collection 'No Line, No Wave', launched in an exhibition at the Pavement Gallery, Graven Images, Glasgow in December 2014. Briggs and Cole commissioned thirteen artists to create individual designs that captured the idea of music and collage, to be used on hand-finished digitally-printed silk scarves. My contribution was inspired by the folk songs I grew up with as a child, from which I understood that music always tells a story (contrary to the abstract biases of modernist interpretations of the sound-based form). In opera too, as in melodrama, the functions of music and narrative are combined. My reading into the plots of folk ballads and operas led me to the genre of romantic historical fiction, known for its tendency towards anachronism: a confusion of elements from different historical periods which might be regarded as a form of temporal or cultural collage. My graphic-novel 'Blonda', an ongoing project, is the manifestation of these interests in visual form.

• http://www.briggsandcole.co.uk/blogs/new...