ARTIST STATEMENT
You And Me But Never You, critiques the male gaze through creating its polar opposite, the female gaze. Rather than it being sexual like a male perspective, I focused on how women feel because of the male gaze – unsafe, sexualised and belittled. My predominant inspiration for this work was Jean-Michel Basiquat both technically and conceptually. His expressive work used a range of hues, saturations, expressive strokes and abstraction which is something I implemented alongside his conceptuality through the “suggestive dichotomies” he uses. My approach to these dichotomies were the different gazes between men and women due to the construction of gender within society.
ARTWORK PROCESS
Using a large brush and an expressive approach the background was painted using a colour blocking technique. To increase the expressive aspects of the work there was no importance placed on fully covering the canvas. Then a smaller brush, not fully loaded with paint, was used to colour block on top of the background sparsely. Then detail was added using posca pens to create the larger designs within the work. The final step in finishing the work was the use of sharpie within the writing.
