Statement of Practice
I paint women in conversation, their gestures, their actions. I want the women I represent to be active and to have a voice and space for their narrative to be heard.
Informed by feminist debate including ‘The Mirror and the palette’ by Jennifer Higgie and ‘The Story of Art Without Men’ by Katy Hessle, my work is in conversation with the historical canon of women painters before me, such as Paula Modersonhn-Becker, Suzanne Valadon, Alice Neel, Chantal Joffe, Jordon Castel and Amy Sherald.
The female gaze is a reoccurring subject matter within my investigations, alongside women in conversation. I am making a literally working to create and showcase spaces where women are speaking.
I use photography to capture moments of women close to me, and then collage these different moments to create new composition and narratives using watercolour, oil paint and egg tempera. I allow the viewer to see the journey of the picture and the movement of the lines underneath, leaving some areas ‘unfinished’ while others are more laboured, creating tension. I work across multiple pieces of paper or canvases, expanding and changing the shape and space the women occupy. Using various pages, I can collage different people and emphasise these fleeting moments and gestures.
‘Dear Ijeawele: Or a Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions’, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and 'Why have there been no great women artists?' by Linda Nochlin are texts I keep coming back to inform my practice. For me, re-examining the canon and giving a platform to the female experience from women's perspectives is still radical.