Joyce Ross cannot remember a time when she did not stitch or knit. She loved art at school, but forsook it to gain a science degree and to teach in secondary schools. Like most girls of her generation, she married in her twenties and had a trousseau of embroidered linens sufficient to last several life times. With the advent of children came a certain expertise in dressmaking and an inordinate amount of voluntary work in the church and her community. She did, however, learn all manner of counted thread embroidery with the late Dorothy Martin. In 1984 she joined the Auckland Embroiderers' Guild and began to study part time at the Whitecliffe Art School, graduating in 1987. Since then she has exhibited compulsively, gaining a sprinkling of awards and selling sufficient to cover her costs. She has taught various forms of embroidery extensively in New Zealand, the USA and in Canada. 'I love colour and simple sttichery used in a painterly way. The artistry of the Ottoman embroideries, the changes over four centuries reflecting the changing life-styles, 'speak' to me.'