Chantal Joffe RA

Born in 1969, Chantal Joffe lives and works in London. Possessing a humorous eye for everyday awkwardness and an enlivening facility with paint, Chantal Joffe brings a combination of insight and integrity to the genre of figurative art. Hers is a deceptively casual brushstroke: whether in images a few inches square or ten feet high, fluidity combined with a pragmatic approach to representation seduces and disarms simultaneously. Almost always depicting women or girls, sometimes in groups but recently in iconic portraits, the paintings only waveringly adhere to their photographic source, instead reminding us that distortions of the brush or pencil can often make a subject seem more real. Often laying bare the physical effort of their making and suffused with a palpable empathetic warmth, Joffe’s paintings are nonetheless deeply questioning images about ever-shifting human connections and the endless intricacies of looking. 

She holds an MA from the Royal College of Art and was awarded the Royal Academy Wollaston Prize in 2006. Joffe has exhibited nationally and internationally at venues including the National Museum of Iceland, Reykjavík (2016); National Portrait Gallery, London (2015); Saatchi Gallery, London (2013 – 2014). Joffe will create a major new public work for the Elizabeth line station at Whitechapel. Titled A Sunday Afternoon in Whitechapel, the work will be on view when the Crossrail station opens in December 2018 

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