Born in Birmingham UK in 1988, based in Margate UK.
I have lived with debilitating chronic illness since childhood.
At its core my work explores dysfunction: in the body, the cells, the mind and society to a greater extent - since the body often serves as an allegory.
I am interested in the power of imagination and creativity, and how it can be used to overcome physical and mental health challenges and create artworks that confront, decontruct, transform and metabolise the chaos.
The female body - my own body, features in most of my work on some level.
My body has been subject to multiple open bowel surgeries including an ileostomy bag at age 19.
I experienced near fatal complications from surgery, from regular intestinal blockages and from infections (sepsis).
Death and fear of death weigh heavy in the work, but this has lead my artistic inquiry into realms that feel necessary to explore.
Society conditions us to view chronic illness and disability as flaws to be hidden, and women’s medical trauma is often overlooked or dismissed.
By bringing this lived experience to the forefront, I hope to show that non-conforming bodies are not to be ignored, that these perceived limitations are sources and catalysts of power and self-determination. It is an active refusal to let the dominant culture dictate who is permitted to take up space, feel desire, and be seen as whole.
Through this lens, the dysfunctioning female body becomes the ultimate canvas for truth with an anarchic vessel that refuses to submit to toxic patriachal ideas of beauty, biology and compliance.
Aesthetically, my work often borrows from, or references elements of cinematography, art history (Baroque and Surrealism especially), literature and philosophy.
I have a modern languages degree, lived abroad for many years and gained exposure to new ideas through learning other languages.
I did not study Fine Art until much later - the one year Postgraduate Drawing Year Programme at the Royal Drawing School in London.
I learnt to paint in Margate at TKE studios in 2022. This was my first experience of having a professional art studio.
Before this I could only afford to pay for one rent - the roof over my head, and would paint on kitchen tables or walls at home.
Having the new separate art studio space and Dame Tracey’s mentorship gave me the chance to develop in the painting medium.
Architecture and space feature heavily in my work too. I am influenced by early Siennese painting and like to paint urban topographies I know well from memory.
On a political level
- women don’t get to walk home through the night without fear, and sick women don’t get to leave the house at all and explore the city. This fear, alientation from the confinement and the joy of nocturnal wanderings (the memory of returning home from my night shifts as a cleaner and working in care homes) is woven into my large urban cityscape paintings. It is about taking control over the view out there, whilst inside the body, inside the home - pain, chaos.
I am from the working-class Midlands. We did not have art history on our state school curriculum or access to world cinema, opera and plays.
I had to work hard to connect and engage with all the cultural influences I reference in my work. I hope that by bringing these elements into my work it shows others from my background that they too have the right to seek out and enjoy the culture that has often been gatekept for the elite.
It would be my greatest hope that my work brings inspiration, or comfort to those who relate to what it’s like to live in what society deems a dysfunctioning body, and fosters understanding from those with a different experience.
All my work is based on lived experience. I don’t plan paintings, I work from memory and imagination.