The Dressing Room Painting

It’s hard to believe sometimes that my interest in the human figure started with my childhood fascination with paper dolls. Despite the limitations of the medium, each had their own character and look, with wardrobes to cater for all occasions: men and women, girls and boys… I may be all grown up now, but the interest in the basic concept remains. Fun, Flirtation and ageless beauty… Where to start — the beginning, of course! I approach my work from many different angles. On one level it’s light and fun, recalling the glamour of the Forties and Fifties, intentionally paying homage to the amazing illustrators of the age. That classic ageless beauty expressed by the fashions of the time holds a fascination for me, managing to be refined and elegant but with its own uniquely flirtatious undercurrent. Truth be told, the fashion illustrators of that period have always been a major influence on me, but so too are many of the fashion artists and illustrators working today. Literature, conversation and love, isn’t life so unpredictable… While the constantly changing face of fashion doesn’t preoccupy me, the silhouette and detail of women’s fashion is a major source of inspiration for me. Layering personal experience with ideas from literature and conversation, I use the genre of fashion painting to create scenarios and characters that I would best describe as visual anecdotes, blended fact and fiction that tell secret stories drawn from my own presence and desires. I also try to set a mood, using feelings from my experiences and encounters to define the personalities of the women in my pictures, delving into my past as well as the present to create fictitious future situations and relationships. Hope and despair, love and sadness… The main protagonists are usually female because I am a woman and there is an element of self-projection in all my work. I love being a woman, and often think about the whole experience of being a woman in the modern world. How do we accept the ideal of true love, that ever-elusive spark between two people we all crave? Where has the dream gone? The flirting; the feeling of suspension between hope and despair… the drama of it all! Passing Strangers and what could be… I use a slightly voyeuristic approach for sure: an overhead fragment of a stranger’s conversation perhaps, or a half-forgotten comment made by a past lover.