Artist’s statement for ‘Fairy Tales and Other Stories”.

 

Many of us grow up with bowdlerised versions of Greek myths and fairy tales but these stories have always had a darker, more adult heart. In a world changed by MeToo, pandemic and war our acceptance of the assumptions embodied in these stories should be re-examined.
The behaviour of the ‘hero’ towards the female or male other, enemy or lover, is challenged by these paintings. What we once normalised as war heroism or ‘masterful’ behaviour we may now see as aggression and violent assault.
I begin with images of cityscapes or trees and woods which metamorphose into threatened or restrained bodies, the presence of the hero overt or suggested.
In ‘Mirror, Mirror’, the title taken from the story of Snow White, I have also looked the ideas of beauty many of these stories embody and of its relationship to metamorphosis and death.