Female Trouble

2018

Different But Same…

Paula Rego begins with drawing. “First of all, number one, I like drawing. Drawing is natural really.”(i.)

She is a master of draftsmanship.

I paint, directly from photographic images, I enjoy painting from the photographic source by means of a grid and painting square by square directly on to the canvas. I deliberately see through the lens. as a female subject into our media-soaked culture.

Images of women: My work, I believe, speaks of a different aspect than Rego – who draws from the personal – I am drawn to images. of the female represented by fashion magazines: that of the public outer image. I have taken pages from fashion magazines and defaced and scribbled upon the photographic images with a spontaneous gesture as a reaction to the manicured idealistic representation of beauty.

My mother has written all her life, in private, there are poems and many years of keeping a journal. I relate that activity back to myself about the private nature of my work, the privacy of the studio, where the reason to create is not to be published or exhibited, but to express something – it’s a need to tell or witness a story.

Rego requires the peace of her studio, for her, drawing is an act of intimacy not easily undertaken within a busy working studio: “the concentration has to be bigger than having people around…you have got to be on your own.”(ii)

(i) Michael Taylor, The Mechanical Hand: Artists’ Projects at Paupers Press (London: Black Dog Publishing, 2012), p50.
(ii) Michael Taylor, The Mechanical Hand: Artists’ Projects at Paupers Press (London: Black Dog Publishing, 2012), p55.