The world is full of contradiction and injustice. I use picture making as a way of highlighting and upturning perceptions of acceptable codes of conduct through references to mythology, narratives and symbols. Infused with humour, the subject matter is quite serious; I see myself very much as a storyteller, combining images I find online, through AI, or from observations, imagination, and observational drawing. Having spent a long time working on national newspapers’ picture desks, I have a strong relationship with the press photo and am aware of how the tiniest adjustment in pose can tell a completely new emotion, and the power of the body to depict a message. My paintings are scenes; the canvas a stage set. Subjects I approach include imbalance of the sexes; double standards; power levels; territorial ambitions; hierarchy; the striving for compartmentalisation, labelling and definition of the self in pursuit of ‘fairness’; basically the padaox of doing the ‘right thing’. I am influenced by contemporary culture, news and political events, and from my own experiences. By using established visual references, I demonstrate the horror that this has not changed through time, and storytelling has always been a method to thinly veil the truth of our times, particularly poignant in a world of conflict where national identity is dangerously on the rise again.
Using a particular palette mixed specifically to convey the balance between beauty and toxicity, the narratives reflect conflicts and moral dilemma. In much the same way as colour has historically been selected for its aesthetic qualities and reflection of status and self-value, such a choice has left behind a legacy of poisoning through being applied to the face, to the walls, to clothing, in pursuit of vibrancy and richness. We think of Scheeles Green (arsenic), Titanium and leads, cadmium reds and yellows all used as wall paint; lead white makeup on faces, vermillion (mercury) on lips and cheeks, and charcoal on the eyes; cobalt blue, and vermillion in clothing and walls, to name but a few. By using such bright, rich colours, I am highlighting that the bright and the beautiful can also contain the most danger, where the beauty and the toxic sit in parallel. I am conveying calmness and violence; appeal and repeal and reflecting the hypocrisies we are compounded by daily and our pursuit of immediacy at the expense of the bigger picture.
The use of animals reflects the animal that is base in us all, and how people see domesticated animals as echoes of their own thoughts; a useful tool for crass mitigation. The colours I use border on toxicity and edge on the beautiful, reflecting the contradictions in the subject matter. It is my way of portraying injustice as a state of the world, sometimes in its tiniest form.
After a BA at the Slade, and an MA at Chelsea, I exhibited throughout the UK and beyond, being represented by One in the Other gallery, London before taking some time away from the studio to raise a family. Recent exhibitions:'Staged', Studio 1.1 London; 'Outliers' Tamsin Morse &Jo Chate, Q&C, Cambridge; Studio 1.1 London (This Years Model), New Art Gallery Walsall, A Generous Space 2 (Selected by Stephen Snoddy), WomXn with Fair art Fair at Unit 1 Gallery Workshop, by Jo Baring and Beth Greenacre; Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize 2021. Collections include The New Art Gallery Walsall (purchased through a Generous Space 2), The Zabludowicz Collection, Timothy Taylor, The Open University and The University of the Arts, London, as well as many other private collections.
