Statement of Practice
I paint women. Women I know: alive and from the archive creating an ever-expanding space for women, exploring their stories, views and research.
My paintings explore fiction, feminism and autobiographical experience; incorporating aspects of auto-theory and intersectional feminist theory as an ongoing methodology within my research.
I use photography and drawing as a prompt to capture staged and natural moments, combined with my imagination and archival material, I explore when painting women becomes a form of subjective embodiment. I integrate my autobiographical experience with social criticism, using feminist theory to underpin and critically evaluate.
Exploring the female experience through visual and audio representation, integrating elements of subjects' identities through the use of patterns, tattoos and jewellery: the women I represent are active, with a voice and given physical space for their narratives.
Process and materiality are significant. I allow the viewer to see the journey of the painting and the movement of the lines underneath, leaving some areas 'unfinished' while others are more laboured. I create a space for imagining new feminist possibilities to continue.
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Informed by feminist debate including 'The Right to Sex' by Amia Sriinivasan, ‘A Time of One's Own’ by Catherine Grant and 'Talking to Women' by Neel Dunn, my work responds to contemporary and historical canon of women artists before me, such as Kaye Doanachie, Paula Modersonhn-Becker, Alice Neel, Chantal Joffe, Jordon Castel, Lynette and Yiadom-Blakey. For me, re-examining and giving a platform to the female experience from women's perspectives is still radical.
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