'arnolfini the feminine' and me

MILLFIELD

MA & Other Postgraduates 2017

20 February – 18 March 2017

Atkinson Gallery

Millfield Atkinson Gallery is a beautiful airy display space within the heart of Millfield School. This purpose built gallery housing Millfield Art Department and showcasing work from MA students across the UK is impressive. Outside, current Millfield pupils artwork is displayed on the staircase and within a series of Art classrooms situated opposite the gallery. Previous years exhibition posters adorn the staircase walls, possible reminders of the art worlds' great and good.

panoramic view of Atkinson Gallery and my work

My digital print piece ‘arnolfini the feminine’ is now hanging alongside other MA students’ work - conceptual, paint, print, multimedia - from across the United Kingdom at the Atkinson Gallery, Millfield Somerset. The inclusion of my work in this the '20 year anniversary' of the exhibition showcasing MA student talent has been a bitter-sweet experience, one that I am extremely grateful for but which has left a slightly sour aftertaste. A personal analogy can be described thus: unexpectedly kissing a luscious being fully expecting to taste mint but finding marmite.

panorama of other MA student exhibits

The description of 'arnolfini the feminine' in the Atkinson Gallery catalogue

My work combines traditional paint, digital and hand rendered designs to produce silkscreen and textile prints inspired by the female form. The patterns that make up these images are taken from a variety of sources and blended digitally to provide colourful compositions.

'we are not worthy'

The Portrait of Arnolfini and his Wife by Jan van Eyck was the starting point for my digital print ‘arnolfini the feminine’. For this work I incorporated my own drawn figurative studies, organic silkscreen prints and linocut projections (juxtaposing the traditional and recognisable) where the idea became more stylised whilst retaining the feminine subject of the original painting by van Eyck. I have blended these variations so that they appear as a fusion of repeated pattern, colour and form.