March/April 2021 Centerfold

Through my practice I am rethinking textile and the decorative within the tradition of painting. I am embracing and subverting the female gaze, the feminine and pretty. Historically, craft and decoration have been perceived as lesser than the “intellectual” fine arts. By combining them, I am challenging this underlying hierarchical system. At the same time, I want to reclaim the female history of textiles, the feminine, the pretty, decoration, the domestic and the female nude. In my recent work I am translating old masters paintings from the Rococo period into paintings constructed of a mixture of tapestry and contemporary fashion fabrics. With these works I attempt to raise questions about taste, femininity, high and low art and the constructs of female identity. As my work is a celebration of materials and ornamental pleasures and an embracement of the female sensuality, it can also be read as a comment on excessive consumerist’s behaviour and self-indulgence. I belong to a group of artists who pursue a renewed significance and meaning around ornament, decoration and crafted materials, and seek to create an art based on both aesthetic and political principles of inclusion.

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