Even though these pieces took close to 6 months to accomplish, I feel like they have taken 17 years. They are coming from a place I have been trying to reach since the day I started to sell my art, and I finally feel like the concept is becoming ripe and ready. As much as I love the French rococo masters, Gainsborough and many more English portrait artists of his period hold a great influence on me. The research is a self-understanding of the effect these works have on me and why.
I am not interested in recreating new period pieces but in using their language for my own message. In their moody, complex background, we understand the storm of emotions that can be held Behind a very strong, composed figure. They are frozen in a state that was borrowed from similar classical poses of powerful or distinguishing ones of the time. I had also borrowed and reconstructed the garments you might find in portraits of the time, breaking them to fit the feminine body but giving them a new sense of strength by exposing their fearlessness of their truth.
Feminism comes from the freedom of being feminine for oneself and no others. It is not about becoming a man but about taking on what is being offered to men of their kind without apology and making it their own.
Hence a judge wig in a fancy blue velvet coat on a fantastical animal to symbolise “my own way and mind.” Or for the hunter, the hunt is a metaphor for reaching your own goals, being ready for a fight, however, with kindness and honesty.
Both pieces, the judge with her clock and the hunter with her bow and arrow, symbolise the struggle women face on these paths to become who they want to be. They both carry with them an accessory, which is also a kind of burden—the judge with her clock and the hunter with her bow and arrow (more about that in the dreamer).
