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queyntes

The paintings are a celebration of womanhood – bright, vibrant and colourful abstracts of their most innermost secret places. The thought was that when someone has their portrait painted, it is of their face with their name as the title – but in this case I wanted the portraits to be of the parts of women that they keep secret, and their names to be anonymous. I think for the women who have participated in this project, the anonymity is most important for them, too.

I painted the pictures intuitively – in that if I “felt” that a certain area was lime green or bright orange, or turquoise, that was the colour I painted it, regardless of the colour I could actually “see” before me. The bright colours denote energy and emotion, ever moving, ever changing, and focusing on the opening itself. They radiate life, just as a woman does, even though her actual colours are more subdued.

The reason I used acrylics was because I needed the colours to be bright and well defined, to dry rapidly and cleanly, leaving me time to work intuitively and quickly. The board was very absorbent, leaving no room for error or a change of colour.

The point of the abstraction was so that they, although anatomically correct, are hidden enough in colouring and some of the external shapes to hide the image for what it is. I love the idea that they can be hung on a wall so that anyone other than the people who know, would not know what they are – continuing with the ongoing secret of the anonymity of subject matter and personalisation.

All the paintings have a woman hidden within the folds to remind you what the image is about.

The paintings are a reminder of what makes women so special, where they accommodate lovers, accept life and give birth to it but also of the complex nature of their beings, represented in the folds, crevices and textures of this entrance to their innermost depths.

The queyntes are bright, beautiful and shameless, both spirited and spiritual.

(Queynte, from quaint, a many-layered, in-folded mystery)