Statement of Practice 

I paint women. Women I know, alive and from the archive.

 

Creating an ever expanding collection of women, exploring their stories, views and research. My paintings explore the space between fiction, feminism and autobiographical experience. Incorporating aspects of autotheory and intersectional feminist theory as an ongoing methodology within my research. 

 

Using 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 am integrating my autobiographical experience with social criticism, using feminist theory to underpin and critically evaluate.

 

Exploring the female experience through visual and audio representation. Intigrating elements of my subjects' identities though the use of patterns, fabrics, 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. Creating a space for imagining new feminist possibilities to remake the present.

 

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 the 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 the canon and giving a platform to the female experience from women's perspectives is still radical.