Lives and works in London.

www.margotsanders.com

There are two important strands of my practise. The first is narrative and the construction of a story, how it is expanded, manipulated and represented. This is captured through the invented characters I illustrate in my painting. The second strand of my practise is my fascination with the body, a subject, I think translates well into paint and a subject that is part of a long line of tradition in painting. This revolves around the man and the woman and while I usually focus on the fairer sex, these have also been juxtaposed with animals as seen in my earlier pieces of work. A metaphor identifying both for the burning desires of sexuality and gender but also to affiliate itself with the history of painting. This tradition for example includes battle scenes found through the likes of Baroque painters and deluge mythology like Noah’s Ark as seen with Francis Danby’s The Deluge, 1840.

Animal attributes still remain with my figures but they have become more abstract and subtle through the use of props such as soft toys, plastic animal masks and fur coats. I have also added a fascination with fabrics and patterns on wallpapers, clothes and furniture which in turn have facilitated the incorporation of my figures into a domestic setting, in one sense, identifying femininity but also reflecting my own personal nostalgia of childhood. With this in mind, I have drawn my attention to painting the people I know, my relationships with them in the setting of my bedroom. An intimate space but also a space that says the most about me. Painting them, I become the intruder into their personal space but this can also be disrupted as they invade my own space. The question of who is intruding on who bounces from one to the other: the painter and the one being painted. Recently, these ideas have been further complicated by introducing characters from my imagination into invented settings. What is happening here is that these two realities are now joined together with invented figures in my actual space i.e. my bedroom. In many respects, I am delving into a form of portraiture that captures the sitter but primarily encapsulates my attachment to them. … Read More