Through the process of painting, making, sketching ideas, and writing down thoughts, I reflect on motherhood, the landscape, interior domestic spaces and being a woman to understand and make sense of the universe, in particular the position of women. I research body awareness in domestic spaces, feelings of interiority and how these reflect a visceral understanding of the human body, the female psyche, and my relationship to the domestic space and nature as a means of understanding the figure as a subject matter. My work is centred around the feelings conjured by two years in which I existed as a body predominantly in a domestic space. The works in the exhibition are informed by my experience of being a mother while trying to make work the longing to go to new places outside the home, and life events as well as more recurring collective feminist themes. You created these artworks over two years and they are informed by personal experiences too … I was initially drawn to the crisis in each story and how it is unpacked, as if each woman is unfolding clothes from a suitcase after a journey from girlhood to womanhood and beyond. Women’s stories interconnect like the branches of a tree or a woven tapestry or the thread count in a blanket. I am intrigued by their stories because they resonate. They are displayed alongside portrait paintings of women who were murdered in Ireland and survivors of the Utoya Island massacre, a young snowboarder from the GB squad who tragically died, as well as a portrait of Esther Freud, daughter of the iconic painter Lucian Freud. British and American actresses, noughties supermodels and portraits of writers Elizabeth Bowen, Edna O’Brien and Sylvia Plath are incorporated into cement, fabric, plaster and photomontages. One sculpture displays a photograph of Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, a housewife who started a revolution from Belarus who fled into exile and the actress Emma Corrin star of The Crown who played Princess Diana posing in outlandish costumes for a photoshoot. The starting point for this new body of work is my fascination with stories of women in the news media concerning love, loss, moving on, murder, resilience, survival and willpower. What was your starting point for this exhibition, which seems particularly apt for Women’s History Month.… However, in saying this, painting is very important and whether I am painting, drawing in my sketchbook, creating a series of etchings or editing video collages or building experimental sculptures, painting informs the practice throughout. I tend not to bracket myself into one medium because I enjoy experimenting with multiple mediums and approaches as it keeps my work fresh and intriguing for me.
So, whatever the artist says is like an apology, it is not necessary…”.
Just the same, the artist must say how he feels…I want to explain why I did the piece I don’t see why artists should say anything because the work should speak for itself. The core of his original impulse is to be found, if at all, in the work itself. A quote from Louise Bourgeois always resonates: “An artist’s words are always to be taken cautiously… The artist who discusses the so-called meaning of his work is usually describing a literary side-issue.
This is key to my practice and has been since I graduated from Crawford College of Art and Design. I am a multidisciplinary process-based artist and I work across a variety of mediums.