Art gallery interior with four large Windrush inspired portraits hanging on white and maroon walls, featuring local individuals with text backgrounds by Annabel Rainbow.
Art quilt called Memento Mori 2 featuring a Annabel's face merging with a skull on a textured background, with birds, flowers, butterflies, and leaves surrounding her, symbolizing the cycle of life and nature.
Annabel Rainbow and Daniel Lismore at the gallery in Leamington Spa for a shared exhibition called Unravelling History.

Annabel with Daniel Lismore at Leamington Spa Art Gallery and Museum. Unravelling History Jan-May 2025.

About Annabel Rainbow

"My quilts are narratives stitched into fabric, exploring memory, identity and the social issues that shape our lives."

 

My quilts combine painted surfaces, stitched text and hand quilting to explore identity, memory, inequality and social history. Rooted in the long tradition of textile art, particularly its history as women's work, they use fabric as both a material and a language through which stories can be told.

Every quilt begins with research. I read widely, gather visual references and develop ideas through sketchbooks before selecting fabrics, threads and imagery. I often dye and print my own fabrics, building each work through layers of appliqué, painting and free-motion machine stitching. Every stage contributes to the narrative, creating surfaces that reveal more the longer they are observed.

Portraiture forms a significant part of my practice. By combining text, image and stitch, I explore the lives and experiences of individuals while reflecting wider social themes. The quilts invite viewers to look closely—not only at the materials, but at the stories they contain.

My work has been exhibited throughout the United Kingdom and internationally in the United States and Australia. I have exhibited alongside Tracey Emin in London and have received awards including Open Competition and Visitors' Choice prizes.

I continue to develop new work that challenges assumptions about both textiles and contemporary art, using quilts as an active—and occasionally disruptive—language for conversation and reflection.

Exhibitions 2026

  • Leamington Spa Art Gallery & Museum – Open Exhibition (March–May)

  • Royal Birmingham Society of Artists – Continuing Exhibition

  • Festival of Quilts – Quilters' Guild Stand (July/August)

Exhibitions 2025

  • Royal Birmingham Society of Artists (until February 2026)

  • Warwick Arts Centre (October–November)

  • Leamington Spa Art Gallery & Museum (January–May)

A full CV is available below.

Profile of Annabel Rainbow featuring a photo, contact information, and exhibition history. The profile includes her website and email, with sections on exhibitions from 2007 onwards. There are images and descriptions of her work at various art galleries, along with collaborations and projects.
CV for Annabel Rainbow, downloadable
Annabel Rainbow painting live at the NEC, helping to raise money for Save The Children. A magazine shot observing the artist painting in a gallery with text "Meet the best artisan makers in the industry."
Magazine cover titled 'The Quilter' featuring a Life quilt by Annabel Rainbow
Article written by Creatives Institute titled "Unravelling History: how to craft a great exhibition," featuring Unravelling History curated by Annabel Rainbow.
Benjamin Zephaniah Windrush portrait. Qian Zephaniah, Annabel Rainbow in front of his quilted portrait at Warwick Uni Oct 2025
Art gallery with portraits of diverse individuals displayed on white and red walls.
Two colorful portraits of women, one wearing a yellow floral dress and the other showing a man with glasses sewing, displayed on a white gallery wall.
A mixed media artwork featuring an abstract human figure, a clock, a blackbird, books, a skull, an apple, a key, and various objects arranged on a textured background with handwritten text. The scene has a surreal, symbolic style.
Art gallery with three prominent paintings: a mixed media portrait of a smiling man with dreadlocks wearing a dark jacket, a colorful abstract piece, and a textile artwork of a woman in traditional attire, along with a smaller abstract painting in the background.
Three portraits of elderly individuals displayed on a red wall in an art gallery, with informational plaques below each.
A woman with glasses smiling, with half of her face depicted as a skull, surrounded by flying birds, butterflies, flowers, and botanical elements against a textured dark background.
Annabel Rainbow "The Harmony of Difference" 2 wall quilts with text and painted eyes. Printed and dyed fabrics, applique, heavy machine stitch.