What would you say has been your biggest achievement? To be honest, I think not giving up has been my biggest achievement, and getting myself to a point where I can live from my art. What struggles do you face being an artist? Making ends meet, as an artist it is a major struggle and doing this whilst keeping your artistic integrity is at times is hard. It can be quite a steep learning curve, because you’re not just an artist, you’re also trying to be a business person, an accountant and a marketing manager all at once and that isn’t necessarily something that comes natural to most artists. On the other side keeping things in perspective is probably one of the biggest struggles. Not comparing your own successes and failures to those of others, not allowing your sense of achievement and self-worth to depend on external factors such as financial successes, failures or prizes and competitions.
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What is your favourite painting and do you have a least favourite? The way I feel about my work constantly evolves, and I often have quite a contradictory and conflicted relationship with my work, where at one moment I can feel completely satisfied and then I slip into absolute despair and want to destroy it. At the moment though, there are a couple of pieces which I feel happy with and they happen to be some of my latest pieces such as ‘traces’, and ‘spectrum’. I feel happy with ‘spectrum’ in particular because I feel that it marks a shift forwards. Maybe that’s what defines which pieces become my favourites temporarily, it’s when I feel that something has clicked and developed. What does independence mean to you and how does that relate to your path? I think that the path of an artist is mostly a solitary, selfdetermined one. You have to carve out a path of your very own. There is no specific way to make art or be an artist. There are no set rules as to how to conduct yourself, even to the point of whether you choose to show your work to anyone or not. So I think independence is at the very core of my life and my work as an artist. How would you describe the void between fantasy and reality? To me it describes an existential problem of existence and desire. As human beings we are never static or complete, we are in a state of constant flux and uncertainty. Yet, I believe we long for some kind of certainty or wholeness. We have a fantasy, a desire, which can never truly be fulfilled. Even if the conscious manifestation of our fantasy
is fulfilled our desire shifts onto something new leaving a constant void. What is it about the female subject that intrigues you? I am a woman and I come from a very matriarchal family, so I’m interested in the female subject from quite a narcissistic point of view to begin with. From an early age I’ve enjoyed looking at and drawing women. We are surrounded by images of female beauty in contemporary society, from media images through to art history, and these images have a very strong effect. I find they can be simultaneously enchanting and terrorising, and this contradictory relationship can evoke questions concerning the more existential issue of desire. How do you think the female subject is portrayed in society? I think there are still many issues around the way women are represented in society. The pressures of youth and beauty which are imposed on women and the overly sexualised images we are fed don’t necessarily create an environment of equality and empowerment for women. Because these images are omnipresent they seem normal and women develop a confused relationship to them and their own