Thank you, it has been a very exciting time and a period of massive growth both personally and in my work. She Performs has been a very gentle, nurturing and positive space for me. It was also good to be curated in a show that deals in some way with performance.

I now see the paintings much more in terms of a trace of a performance, a residue of the meeting between the body and the space and time where affect imbued from autobiography is held , almost like a dance that has been tethered a photographic exposure. The online works have been a way of un-containing or spilling the sexuality, sensuality and affect previously contained in what Deleuze would call the “block of sensation“ that is the stretcher. Through growing personal strength and healing this self that was only able to be expressed in this way (and also on the dance floor and as a little raver) no doubt because of experiences of trauma, control and oppression throughout my life has been released using the safe spaces of a private Instagram account and the studio from which to spill, perform and dance.

It’s interesting my body contains 47 years of lived experience all of which in some ways is contained in the works in an “art comes through the body and the life experience” way. (A quote from my tutor at Goldsmiths Mark Leckey, which is a big touchstone for me.) I don’t identify as trans though I am a queer woman and I don’t necessarily see gender as being such a binary thing. Certainly I am aware of patriarchal structures, especially within the field of painting and societally as an older woman and as a single parent whose life does not fit with “normative” structures. Other than that gender is just one aspect of my identity and experience.

I suppose also the wet bodily release of the paintings does refer strongly to female sexuality - this was not something however that I imposed on them - it has been like a feedback loop where the work is talking to me as much as I am talking to it - a kind of channeling. The book “wet” by Mira Schor has been insightful on this and also the intimacy and power of the painters clothing and at times the unpicked paintings themselves - that have in my case allowed this exploration into online performance - like an extension of the safe space of the studio.