Gender roles, power and the empathetic potential of painting are the focus of my practice. My figurations of vulnerability respond to Old Master history painting in which the male body is enshrouded in power, prestige and emotional impenetrability. Referring back to the passive feminine subjects of Frederic Leighton and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, my figures embrace emotive moods and postures while retaining their masculinity. The pairing of a male figure with vulnerability represents a discursive fissure where the workings of power are exposed. Provoking and exploring such fissures lies at the heart of my artistic practice.
Intense colour and strong natural light lend my solitary figures a warm, human quality. Responding to the notion of the 'female gaze', I create intimate compositions in which the averted gaze of the male subject invites empathy and interrupts objectification. Wet-in-wet paint application and loose brushwork escort the viewer past the representation of the figure to the larger critical action of the painting. Through the familiar medium of figure painting and the meditative act of viewing, viewers are encouraged to think critically about contemporary values and belief systems.