My practice explores internal worlds from the surface, tracing the experience of living in the female body, referencing ageing. Marks are of the utmost importance here, I see lines, shapes and colours making representations of inner and outer worlds. I move from the figurative image to evocative impressions of, for instance, the skin. Over recent months, my works have become lighter more ethereal, making suggestions rather than statements.
The surface evokes what lies beneath: I have looked at Kiki Smith who starts from a literal point of observation, moving from physical exactitude to distort and maim her sculpted figures, by elongation and injury. I work with figures and impressions emerging and changing within my pictures, as in my experience the distorted image can express within the topic of imperfection the creative potential of mistakes and blemishes.
Similarly, I found Maria Lassnig’s searing psychological oeuvre presents herself to the viewer: a search for interior knowing, transforming reality into partial figures, her experiences of the internal body.
My work is informed by feminism, my interests include other ways artists incorporate their experience of ageing invoking political and social outcomes. In the work of Mira Schor, artist, art historian and commentator. I found her painting’ Against Gravity’ in Woodward’s ‘Figuring Age’ addressing the the reality of bodily imperfection. Blemishes can and do evoke humour and on occasion the carnivaleasque within my own work.
The theoretical consideration of others is important to me, whilst engaging with exhibitions and galleries.
The blog on my website vivlm.com records my art journey, an artwork art itself.
