Description

A large scale watercolour full of bright vivid colour.

I like there to be a reason for the women in my art to be without their clothes, for example washing or swimming are both very good reasons for being naked.

She’s painted entirely from my head, I then brought her into some kind of palatable state by hard graft and watercolour technique. I wrestled with her: first, I had to stretch the paper halfway through – because I didn’t want it all crinkly. Then, I gave her hip a better shape by wetting and soaking up the ink marks I didn’t like… and finally, I made her more contrast-y from the background – all while keeping her full of clean, vivid colours. Some unintentional marks appeared through the top corners of the paper, when it got totally soaked in ink. I realised that it was from where the label had been on the first part of the large roll – that’s the origin of the tiled background, to mask this glitch.

I’ve been on a creative journey bringing this painting into being. I threw a lot of liquid ink at it, and wanted to see if I could pull something off, so I just stayed with it, coaxing her out – I was committed.

I dived straight in, with the intention of just making a mess. I did an abstract underpainting and then responded to the preliminary random lines I’d made. In this instance, right there in front of me, very quickly, I could make out the wonderful shape of her breast. I just encouraged the rest to take form.