Shantelle Morrison
Prairiewood High School
FEMINITY AND THE CURVE
Painting
Acrylic on board
My body of work is an abstract expressionist painting based on the concept of femininity, using conventional colours and feminine forms such as rounded curves, circles and organic lines. My influences are Georgia O'Keefe and Lee Krasner, both modernist, feminist, abstract painters working at a time dominated by male practitioners. The multilayered, textured surface of my painting coupled with the assembly of overlapping, sensual, curved shapes alludes to the many aspects of womanhood, and to the array of complex identities and representations within the realm of 'femaleness'. Ultimately, my painting is a tribute to female strength and empowerment, and a celebration of femininity.
My artmaking practice has been influenced by the study and interpretation of the following artists: Georgia O'Keefe, Lee Krasner.
Marker's Commentary
This body of work represents a subjective, intuitive process of painting for the artist, yet there is an intellectual substrate that underlies it, exploring identity and what it is to be female. Apricot and sienna hues and gestural lines painted in sweeping curves work to symbolise the feminine within this abstract painting. The work is emotive rather than didactic. There is something elemental in the rhythm of circular motifs, woven across the horizontal canvas. They allude to breasts, womb or a broader landscape of ‘Mother Earth’. Fervent, vertical and diagonal lines dissect the plane with staccato consistency, yet harmony and sensuality prevail.
