Nudes

I attended my first life drawing session when I was about 8 years old - I was ill and went along with my Mum!
The human form is amazing and should be celebrated - life drawing is a great process: observation and focused working. My prints are small edition prints, 5-10 maximum prints made form each plate. The plate is generally made directly from life.

I want to depict women as thinkers, strong, singular entities not mother or queen or sex object, able to indulge and be guilty of sloth or envy, and still maintain feminine beauty – sirens. The depiction of women in art has been a preoccupation through a degree in Archaeology: the goddess figures of fertility, the possibility of matriarchal societies in the Neolithic and the dominance of home maker, gatherer roles for women. Experiencing depictions of women in Degas delicate dancers and burlesque bathers, Rodin’s fallen in the gates of hell and sexualised drawings of women, Henry Moore’s gigantic queens and powerful mothers cradling infants reinforce the same depictions investigated in Archaeology. I am increasingly interested in depicting less well known women, historical characters in a different light, the juxtaposition of the beauty of the nude with the fem-fetal or warrior woman.

Marigold Men (Marigolds are luridly coloured rubber gloves) are a series of prints, the male nude wearing rubber gloves, comic and concerned with the depiction of men in advertising using cleaning products along side the male names given to cleaning products / vacuum cleaners. Even though the realm of the domestic is still predominantly female - wouldn't we all like a Marigold man? This is a small attempt to redress the lack of domestic male figures depicted in art - not just king, leader, soldier or nobleman but man who also cleans the toilet.