Personal Statement

Me aged 21

I am thinking about female embodiment and transformation. Such existential musings ramp up as I age and start noticing the world differently. My attention has shifted, I have new priorities, and my body is changing. When I travel, I am no longer harassed as I was as a younger woman and can shift from being visible to invisible, depending on where I go. I am moving past being fertile and ripe to something more self-serving.

I am retracing my steps. This has included writing and returning to painting. I want to tell my story via portraiture and video works without making a judgment call on what it means to be a woman. If I catch a wave, I will let it carry me. I am interested in observing all the nuances of my shifting mood. I experiment with my mediums, layering, weathering and peeling away to discover what is beneath the surface.

At seventeen, I moved to Sydney to pursue a Fine Arts Degree. I was told that painting was “dead” and that Figurative painting was even deader. I was never taught how to paint and was strongly discouraged from pursuing my interest in the female figure by my male art teachers. On the other hand, I was welcome to be a life drawing model. These days, I am not listening to men who seek to control or confine me. Now that I have a voice again, I am a woman on fire.