I am best-known as a portrait painter, but during the pandemic I experimented with film alongside my husband, filmmaker Owen Tooth. Unlike big oil paintings, film is an ideal medium to share digitally, and I wanted to explore the nature of being locked-down in my studio, creating work in isolation and finding strength and beauty in that.
The title “A Room of One’s Own” refers to an essay by Virginia Woolf in which she explores her conception that “a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction”, and, by extension to make any sort of cultural contribution.
She identifies creative women such as herself as outsiders who exist in a potentially dangerous space. That space has never in my lifetime been so dangerous or so clearly defined as it is now during the pandemic, and I wanted to share a glimpse of the sealed and private ‘world’ within which the artist retreats physically and mentally in order to create. It is also a memorial to my precious beloved rooster, Chanterel.
Memento Mori teaser video:
https://www.facebook.com/161055064078582/videos/344302556192763
