I began making these works in 1998 when works on display by women in British Galleries was a shocking 0.2%. I wrote “ With my latest work, using female friends and myself as life models. I am trying to depict the celebration of the female body. These images are about the feelings of being women and what it means to be a woman.
Generally, throughout the history of painting, men have used women as their life models. Many images of women are therefore depicted from a male point of view. Very often leaving the life model or woman to be passive in their role and the artist as voyeur.
As a woman, I wish to record images of women in celebration of who and what we are. Attempting to portray life models as women with thoughts, feelings, opinions and emotions.
Women are assessed continuously by everyone and especially by themselves for their visual appearance. From this visual assessment assumptions are made of their character, intelligence, attractiveness, sexuality and so on. I do not want to create any kind of assessment within my work. But rather to represent the beauty and reality of women that celebrate the acceptance of our nature.
I believe that we as women, have a host of feelings about ourselves that are determined by our physical body both externally and internally. Our chemical makeup, which is forever changing, affects the way we see ourselves and how we think others see us. Through this work I am keen to express the model’s emotions and character, rather than objectifying them merely as beautiful or sexual images.
Before I made the work, I wrote a list of discussion points to provoke thoughts and conversations. I felt it was important to get to know the models on a deeper level and for me to discuss my intentions for the work with them to discover how we as women view our own and other women’s bodies. I would then translate the experience of understanding my models as people, as well as observing they’re physical bodies.
I created an environment so that the models were not being glamorised in anyway or represented for the titillation of others, so they could be natural by feeling comfortable in their surroundings and not trying to “pose” for me in anyway.
‘WOMEN’S WORK’
August 1999 – Southtown Gallery at Gaia, Leamington Spa
‘NAKED’
May 2000 – Warwick University Library Gallery
