In 2021, I began making a series of studies of the works of Velázquez. As I begun this particular work, which I then titled 'The Infante,' I reused a 2018 painting on linen that depicted the Statue of Liberty. Probably significant that I painted her over the Statue of Liberty also, considering the constraints on the freedom of women to carve their own futures I'm addressing here. I decided to repurpose the canvas, drawing inspiration from not only Velázquez (the wide peplum dress in La Infanta Margarita, portraits of her were sent to Vienna to inform Leopold of what his young fiancée looked like) but also from Klimt (the stance of Mäda Primavesi) and Camille Claudel (sculpture La Petite Châtelaine). Throughout this process, I wanted to explore the theme of the socialization of girls, incorporating elements from these artists to convey my message. It became more personal along the way.

The project evolved through several stages, with the first 'finished' stage featuring a girl, dressed in a yellow gown that reminded me of Charlotte Perkins Gilman's 1892 novel, "The Yellow Wallpaper," an important early work of American feminist literature for its illustration of the attitudes towards mental and physical health of women in the 19th century. However, I felt that this image wasn't quite bold enough in what I wished to convey about my own youth's circumstances.  I then decided  to paint the background in red, which ultimately led to the final result.

To me, the painting unintentionally grew to feel like a self-portrait, even though the head is that of La Petite Châtelaine, a sculpture by Camille Claudel, who found herself confined in an asylum by her brother and never sculpted again. Perhaps I identify with that aspect of her as an artist who had her creative growth stunted. As a child, I experienced an isolated upbringing and was denied the opportunity to attend art school due to restrictive parenting. I was not allowed to play with other children or have friends over to our house. Despite receiving praise during an art class from a nun who encouraged me to nurture my talent, I was expected to pursue more conventional subjects for a stable career, which led me to study mathematics. I never rebelled against these constraints, the thought never even entered my mind.  

In the final work, I can find echoes of this upbringing. While I'm painted with an open mouth -screaming, shouting, singing?- there is no sound coming out, I remain silent. My inner world has always been vibrant and filled with color, as I spent my time reading, drawing, and teaching myself to paint at home. This was my refuge, a totally solitary path of self-discovery. No wonder I am still extremely introverted, while I'm just as much extravert in my paintings.

This work feels like such a good fit as book cover for Alice Miller's 'Drama of the Gifted Child' to me? I'd welcome such an offer~

What does the title 'A Still Life' stand for? A still life, the series of still lifes is about a longing for stillness, for slowing down, a 'different' way of looking than the trance of scrolling through pervasive images, coming home to ourselves in the wide open space of our deepest layers. From where the beauty of the world gently reveals itself to us, the elegance of the fragile life that we all, each of us, weave together with the objects we touch, our dreams, memories, desires, hopes and relations. It even feels a bit rebellious to spend that much time quietly observing these objects, making time stand still while the world races on in chaos. 

In her poem 'This Big Fake World," Ada Limón writes about it in this fragile way:

The object is to not simply exist in this world of radio clock and moon pies, where holidays and lunch breaks bring the only relief from the machine that is our mind humming inside of its shell. Shouldn’t we make a fire out of everyday things, build something out of too many nails and not wonder if we are right to build without permission from the other dull furniture? Out of this small plot we are given, small plot of cement and electrified wires, small plot of razors and outlandish liquor names, let’s make a nest, each of us, of our own pieces of glass and weeds and names we have found. Somewhere along the banks of this liquid world let all of us hold close to the lost and the unclear, and, in our own odd little way, find some refuge here.


These paintings are based on A Still Life, 4, The Kitchen Sink, a start of a series of iterations towards more and more abstraction a bit like images fade and distort in our memories. That's how my mind works anyway. All iterations are 30 by 30 cm, oil on canvas board. I worked on these first iterations during Zoey Frank's course, "Breaking the Space".

Winter. I’m slowly exploring my natural eb and flow in art making. I get frustrated about the lacklustre light in my studio and feel totally unable to see what color I’m mixing. I do have a special daylight light system, but blah, it’s not at all the same as getting up in the morning with a clear sky and natural light present and waiting for me and my clean brushes. I find myself reading a lot, pondering on how to finish paintings I started during a Zoey Frank course, juggling new ideas in my mind, thinking about new painting approaches for me while looking and listening to other artists talking about theirs. For instance it can be a formal approach, a challenge to do a painting that answers a certain formal, maybe compositional question, like ‘can I make a painting where the viewer’s eye can freely travel around the surface of the painting?’ Or, ‘can I do a high chroma painting and how would I create space?’ And all the while always dialoging with art history. Or more conceptually, cerebral perhaps, paint about sociologically inspired stuff, the what versus how to make the painting.
In winter I guess I’ll wait for my seeds to come up in spring and then I’ll say, like Matt Damon in The Marsman, when a potato shoot springs, he cups the tiny leafs in his hand and says ‘Hi there,’ to it. The challenge is how can I be patient and trust the process. I actually tend to use a lot of my own ‘sh*t’ too, metaphorically that is. 
Anyway. Last month I got some books from the second hand bookstore on art history, Taschen’s 'Women Artists in the 20th and 21st century', 2002, Whitney Chadwick’s 'Women, Art and Society', the 1990 ed. Thames and Hudson (I had an issue with it, but can’t remember where now), Germaine Greer’s 'The Obstacle Course, The Fortunes of Women Painters and Their Work', Farrar Straus Giroux, NY, 1979 and ordered a copy of ‘Mix and Stir, New Outlooks on Contemporary Art from global Perspectives', edited by Kitty Zijlmans and Helen Westgeest, Plural Series Valiz, Amsterdam, 2021. I started with Kitty Zijlmans’ book Kunstgeschiedenis (Art History) from the Elementaire Deeltjes series (Amsterdam University Press, 2018) I took out at the library. Insanely interesting it hints at alternatives to study art beyond national constraints and cultural dominances and hierarchies and how to braden the approach of art to its global dimensions, as opposed to the Eurocentric approach that ran galore in my schooling. And white, patriarchal and capitalist I might add. In her book, she refers to US art historian James Elkins who had the most wonderful course of short video’s on Youtube “Concepts and Problems in Visual Art.” *Look up his channel ‘James Elkins’. In lecture H2 How does Art History appear to you?, he invites his students to do an intuitive drawing of art history. Do a drawing of everything you think about in art, arranged in the way you feel about the topics or items you include. WOW?! What an eye opener! I wish I had a professor like that in my art classes. But I’m not complaining, I’ll do a drawing myself here and plant another seedling. I'll use my fave painter's fav painting: Velázquez' 'Las Meninas' and organise my stuff around it.

​​Collage writing, that’s what this looks like, as my eye goes around and adds stuff in my sketch of art history, memories float up and then my mind jumps onto something else I want to add. Or is that just how the mind works, is that the way we tell the story of our life to ourselves? Mind you there are infinite variations on the elements I added. And maybe there’s no ONE painting that could come out of this. A puzzle technique. Weaving together. Now I’m thinking of Lidia Yuknavitch's book 'Thrust', I still didn’t finish and that addresses just that.

Who am I? What do I stand for? What are my beliefs? WHY do I make art? What do I want to leave in the world, how would I want my work impact the world? *Ego-Inflation red flag? Naivety red flag?* What is my purpose?
The artist statement seems to want me to know answers to all those questions and write it in a compact concise two paragraph text. All it does though is bring me into an existential cramp, trying to figure out the response to age old philosophical, spiritual, religious questions.
I’m very aligned with a Buddhist take on that. Usually “I am” a little self, made up of wants, fears, successes and failures. That’s sort of limiting and scanty, almost a logical precursor of the commodification of my work.
When asked this question about who we are, a teacher responded by holding up a really large sheet of white paper and he drew a small V-shape on it. Then he asked the students what it was a picture of and most responded that it was a flying bird. “No,” he said, “it’s a picture of the sky with a bird flying through it.” He showed that what you pay attention to about yourself, about life, determines your experience. Focusing on the bird is like paying attention to what’s most obvious in the foreground of your mind, thoughts, sensations, feelings. Shifting to seeing the sky is like opening to the context that’s holding those experiences, the ocean of awareness, an alert openness from which you perceive all that is happening.
It seems to me to paint is holding that question “who am I?”, holding the space in which the answer to that question ‘floats’ through me, it’s taking the step back and let the work reveal answers I am this now, I am that, now I am this etc. It is an ongoing process. The answer is not a stable thing. I live and paint ‘inside’ of a question, how we live our daily lives every single day, a question that doesn’t have any single resolution, a question I am in active dialogue with in my life and in my relationships to other people. And so, I’ll probably die painting. 
What is my belief about life? What makes a life, what makes a life worthwhile? And who decides that? Life should not be a pool of misery, we work to pay our taxes and then die. I see it more as a quest for joy and artistry (at life). I also believe that the space where my self is formed is where the hope lies. I think my art is about hope, and wonderment and joy, curiosity also, about life, my own and that of others, about our vulnerabilities, the innocence, the courage, about how we find/create meaning. Everybody/Every Body counts and Every Day matters/Everyday matters. Puns all intended. 
I’m feeling connected in my painting. I paint what I feel, the story I tell myself about what happened, what I’ve seen, what I’ve experienced. As I paint, I figure out what (my idea of) the world is about underneath the chaos, the noise. I figure out what I’m about, what my art is about, what I value-A Still Life-which is infinitely more interesting than one would think if you look more closely. I am working now on a series of still life's, I titled ‘A Still Life.’ To me, attention to nature, to small things, mundane things can bring me great joy. In portraying trees or these humble objects, everyday matters  that will remain after I’m gone, that are imbued with memories of belonging, I feel great joy and authentic, simple, pure happiness I suppose, vs the small self above, the ego self that may be driven by struggle and suffering.
What is my purpose? Is that a Western question? I’m inclined not to look for purpose externally, something I have to find. Like for instance to protest violence, to make political art, to address injustice. I have done bodies of work on women’s issues,  I still feel quite powerless over injustices that occur. Not so much explicit activism anymore, now I’m older. But rather as intrinsic to who I am as a person. I believe those interests will show through even if I don’t address them explicitly. Picasso-Guernica-said it well: “An artist is constantly aware of the heartbreaking, passionate, delightful things that happen in the world.”
I believe in “The force that through the green fuse drives the flower,” as in Dylan Thomas’ poem. I am no different than nature, rather I am a part of nature. A view so under stress by patriarchal capitalism, we are separate from/have to control nature etc. I am more like the bee that transfers pollen from one flower to another and keeps our environment going, and doesn’t just collect its own resources for living its bee-life. By its nature, it’s naturally serving a massive ecological purpose, probably totally unaware of that, but who knows. Nature works in cycles that way, in flow, it’s gift economy principles, not capitalist market principles. Artists make work and people receive it as we share it with the world, whether the viewers buy a work or not. Brandi Stanley makes a great conclusion from that: if I tap into what makes me feel alive-painting-then by nature, even if I’m not aware of the collective implication of what I’m doing, and may not see it in my lifetime, I may serve a deep purpose in community through my work.
To finish, let me quote David Bowie, he formulates it so much better: “The reason that you initially started working was that there was something inside yourself that you felt that if you could manifest it in some way, that you could understand more about yourself and how you co-exist with the rest of society.” There it is, an artist statement. One paragraph.


*Here’s Dylan Thomas’ poem:


The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees
Is my destroyer.
And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose
My youth is bent by the same wintry fever.
The force that drives the water through the rocks
Drives my red blood; that dries the mouthing streams
Turns mine to wax.
And I am dumb to mouth unto my veins
How at the mountain spring the same mouth sucks.
The hand that whirls the water in the pool
Stirs the quicksand; that ropes the blowing wind
Hauls my shroud sail.
And I am dumb to tell the hanging man
How of my clay is made the hangman's lime.
The lips of time leech to the fountain head;
Love drips and gathers, but the fallen blood
Shall calm her sores.
And I am dumb to tell a weather's wind
How time has ticked a heaven round the stars.
And I am dumb to tell the lover's tomb
How at my sheet goes the same crooked worm.

During Summer Holidays, after feeling frustration with the way the world is spiralling off, I decided to start a new series titled  'A Still Life.' A play of words, since the paintings will be still lifes and they will reflect my personal still life. The idea sort of occurred to me after reading Sarah Stillman's novel 'Still Life,' the reason why I love doing still life paintings. She has some awesome writing on art braided into the story, what art does, what it means.

​I loved these lines in it. Like this one: "Art versus humanity is not the question, Ulysses. One doesn’t exist without the other. Art is the antidote. Is that enough to make it important? Well, yes, I think it is.” 

So, I'm returning to my painter self, anchoring my 'still life' in a world that seems to spin more out of control as we go. It feels almost subversive to spend hours quietly observing and rendering an object. I added Deborah Boe's poem as statement, as I often find it difficult to write about what I'm doing; I mean, who said 'if I could say it in words, there would be no reason to paint'? All that emphasis on wording for artist painters ... I wonder? Maybe I'm not that kind of artist? Too many words can kill a piece. Why not be still and behold? I'm returning to read poems for that reason, their 'language' can make entering into paintings easier.