Personal is Political
Chantal Joffe
‘I am a feminist. I often think that being a woman and being a painter leaves you no choice – how could you not be a feminist? I paint what I think about, what I look at, the life I am living – I don’t know what else there is.’ (1)
Joffe examines the personal and her work primarily depicts women and questions the objectification of the female body and how images are created. (2) Joffe’s paintings of women are actual and to me highlight the complexes of being female. Joffe depicts women speaking, playing with children, resting, posing, and being touched. Joffe is in direct conversation with Paula Modersohn-Becker, a conversation she has created by referencing directly to Becker’s painting ‘6 wedding anniversary’ Joffe is ‘talking to her across time’ -Joffe (RA Lecture) Joffe has used a similar colour pallet and composition, opening a dialogue about her own thoughts and concerns about motherhood and pregnancy.
When looking at Joffe’s work, I am drawn to the scale as her paintings are often huge and tower above you. They force you to move back and forth, and they become abstract when you’re move close. I enjoy the loose gestural marks Joffe often starts with apple green – 'it’s a colour Degas used for a ground.’ Her loose, fluid brushwork, unrealistic skin colour pallet and elongated hands and arms are visual motifs I employ. I am drawn to the domesticity and everydayness of Joffe’s work. By using watercolour and paper, an immediacy is created that I haven’t yet been able to emulate with oil paint. I enjoy the heightened stained colours watercolour painting grants, the fluidity results in quickness and freshness. I see this same fresh energy within the work of Joffe, as she is described in Great Women Painters: ‘Working primarily from photographs and from life, Joffe paints her portraits of women and girls in an expressive, fluid style’
2) https://suehubbard.com/chantal-joffebeside-the-seaside/
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Paula Modersohn-Becker
Paula Modersonhn–Becker humanises the female experience and gives a platform to a question that concerns other female artists, including myself: 'Will a child change my life’ (P165). Her paintings often depicts her friends and she regularly painted herself, putting herself into the narrative. In this painting, ‘Self-Portrait on Sixth Wedding Anniversary,’ Becker is not pregnant, she is imagining and questioning what pregnancy could mean to her for her career as an artist. As a female artist getting closer to 30, I find myself questioning pregnancy and motherhood a lot. I worry that a child would result in me losing my artistic career. This painting feels like a conversation with Becker, with concerns and feelings I have myself about pregnancy and childcare.
