My paintings are about our secret parts, desires, longings. They have been described as ‘voluptuous’ and ‘visceral’. They are dark, rich and often humorous… above all, human.
For the past few years, I’ve been examining the politics of identity, gender and labelling through the concept of BEASTLINESS. If something is rough or ugly, is it a beast? By labelling something ‘beast’, do we make it beastly? Human beings are vulnerable creatures of flesh and blood, but we can also be rough, wild and capable of more creativity and cruelty than any other animal.
Recently I have begun a series of work called Touch My Face, made since the lockdown and government advice not to touch our faces or other peoples’. It explores our human need for intimacy and our sense of touch – it is essential for us to come close to others, yet potentially perilous. We can self-soothe, self-harm and find ecstasy or danger through touching.
My work often references classical, biblical and folk-tale imagery. The roughness and incompleteness of the paint confronts the conventions of visual depiction and the fragility of our existence in concrete reality and time. I use acrylic paint to work fast and capture movement and dynamism.