Exhibition Artist Statement

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I am an art teacher working in Kent, and a practicing artist in my spare time. My celebrity portrait work of Alex Vause was commissioned and used for Netflix’s OITNB final series. The artwork is used for the series cover on Netflix and was featured on billboards across USA and in lights in Times Square as part of the final advertising campaign.

 

I am inspired by people, the raw and real sides of us that reside within, that we often try to hide. I am preoccupied with concept of ‘The Female Icon’, but not as their status as Celebrity, but rather as human beings. I intend for my portraits and figures to hold subtle truths; for people to look at these ‘unravellings’ and just feel things. To relate to these iconic women from a new perspective of common humanity rather than idealisation and expectation. These intimate pieces find the light and dark in all of us; the fragility and vulnerability of being human. They are strong, sensitive and a little confrontational and angry. They are feminine and quiet, but full of a loud internal reckoning. Often titled in an unassuming simple first name, She is no longer ‘Celebrity’; instead befits a shared status. One that searches for oneself, which we can all relate to.

Often turned away, or vacantly gazing towards us, She is turning towards an inner world that can never be wholly communicated to her audience. Paradoxically, her ‘Celebrity’ veil, in these portraits, bares tiny elements of her soul; it covers and uncovers the personal that she grasps on to. She and her Celebrity dissociate through Her veils of disseminating brush marks. She is both present and absent. Suppressions and emergences.  Intoxicating and disconcerting. Repellent and alluring. A product of media and genuine to herself. Insincere and extremely real. Her ‘Personal’ has become universal Her ‘Celebrity’ has become irrelevant.