The Bluebeard’s Wife Painting

My practice is dedicated to the representation of women. I am particularly drawn to ancestresses, I reclaim their image giving an emphasis to both the fortitude and the glamour. I inquire into the aesthetics of absence, hauntology, and nostalgia. I look at the dress as the memory of the absent. Dresses, that I consider to be the ultimate female garments, form their own visual language -- the feminine sartorial language that speaks of identity, empowerment, and allure. In the absence of the wearer, the dress speaks of non appearance. In the absence of the wearer, the dress forms the only portrait that remains. My work has an intermediary power between entities: past and present, photography and painting. The protagonists I portray I uncover in archival photos that I collect. They entice me from the past with their mystery and untold stories, yet often all I am left with is an orphan image. Photography informs my painting, both the archival photos and the contemporary ones I take myself. My paintings however, unlike the photographs that inspired them, are not the items of evidence. They are reminders of something else - faded lives and fleeting memories. They aim to evoke the sense of loss. I see the role of an artist as an archivist too, the bearer of the past that holds the key to the future. In equal measures this applies to the images as well as time honoured artistic processes.