The Gifts
2017
It all started with Sleeping Beauty, and the many gifts bestowed upon the baby Aurora by the good witches of her kingdom.
Not least was she given the voice of a nightingale – that bird whose most sublime song could fill the world with enchantment.
Incognito (study), 2016, oil on linen, 35 x 35 cm
Masquerade, 2018, oil on canvas, 87 x 100 cm
Incognito, 2017, oil on canvas, 87 x 100 cm
Like so many fair ladies in the tales we have come to know, and despite their many gifts not least their beauty, these girls seemed to live in a gilded cage of sorts, a place where their movement was restricted or bound by events.
The ceramic figurines convey a classic princess silhouette of fitted bodices, miniscule waists bounding out to gowns full of sway, and waving hemming lines as though each skirt housed a fan beneath the hoops and layers of petticoat and tulle – the pleats and folds become stupendous and awesome. These dresses evoke the rustle of silk and taffeta, skirts filled with air as they billow and sway in momentous hyperbola, against the contradiction of restricted movement of the actuality of a corset and hoop skirt – if only life in these dresses were so carefree, yet they are bound in porcelain, captured in a moment. The ceramic figurines, hollow inside, their glassine surface with usually pale flesh, captured in a moment of stillness.