Artist Statement
Specialising in oil paints and pastels, my work explores narratives where fragmented figures explore vast and often desolate landscapes. By blending the textures of paint and pastel, I evoke a sense of surrealism through texture, playing with warped and distorted perceptions of reality. The influence of voyeurism and folk horror underpins my practise, deeply rooted in my upbringing in rural England. My work encourages the viewer to interpret the scene through their own lens, sparking deeper contemplation of personal narratives and human experiences.
Reproduction and Enclosure installed at the Quay Arts gallery cafe.
Contextual Statement
Reproduction is a research project culminating in a diptych and a standalone canvas depicting vivid countryside landscapes filled with field rows and scattered silhouettes. Using mixed media on canvas, such as oil paint, oil pastels and embroidery, I aimed to convey layered indications of narrative which are embedded throughout the work. These narratives explore connections between crop cycles, land occupation and how this mirrors notions of patriarchal ownership over female bodies.
I began by gathering inspiration from site visits from where I was born and raised, a town called Carisbrooke on the Isle of Wight which is surrounded by farmland and overlooked by a castle. In the middle ages, the castle represented control through farmland, as the Island has its own micro-climate allowing for especially fertile soil. There is an abundance of wildlife and plants that are unique to the area, which are divided up by large rows of cultivated crops, this has imbued itself visually into my making, focusing on how nature on the island has adapted to organised farming.
Questions of how female bodies are positioned next to arable farming were investigated through conversations with the castle’s museum, collecting records, maps and stories of prominent female figures that lived and died at Carisbrooke castle, such as 12th century widow Isabella de Fortibus, a child bride who produced six children by the age of 23 for the lord of Carisbrooke, and subsequently inherited the castle and the surrounding farmland after his passing. I started to piece together my archival research and considerations of local arable farming with Initial readings on forced reproductive labor, with reference to Caliban and the Witch (Federici, 2004) and The Ruin of all Witches (Gaskill, 2021), to unearth an intersection between women’s reproductive systems and labour, with the process of agriculture. Just as men have controlled farmland, exploiting it for production, they have similarly exerted this dominance over female bodies, regulating and framing fertility as a resource to be managed, owned and harvested.
A broader historical research into women’s labour also fuelled my making and material choices in the project, such as The Subversive Stitch (Parker, 1984). Embroidery had been so very integral to the conception, production and completion of the project; allowing me to explore and understand a deeper connection between my own physical labour of embroidering onto painted canvas, and the identities of the women who used the craft as a form of work and personal expression. The final outcomes are an ode to Carisbrooke, reconstructing the landscape through bright pigment and mark making, as well as echoing the stories of the woman that lived there – highlighting the parallel between the treatment of land and the treatment of the female body as sites of extraction, control, and imposed value.
Reproduction, 2025
Oil pastel, oil paint and embroidery on canvas
92 × 123 cm
Enclosure, 2025
Oil paint, oil pastel and canvas
164 × 102 cm
Special thanks
I want to thank Ian, Alicia and Quay Arts gallery for hosting my work with such care and consideration, especially at such short notice. Of course, I also want to thank Abigail Steed for all photography, capturing the project documentation so beautifully. Millie Matthews has also been integral to all of the gritty technicalities, being a life saver with website design and social media marketing! I also want to thank George Sparrow, my wonderful fiancé who has had to put up with our flat turning into a very messy home studio over the last 5 months.
The full online exhibition and website.