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haptic bodies


Semester 1


September 2026
Initial thoughts Where am I situated in art? I am a mixed media portrait artist who explores identity and connection, be it with whom/whatever, through large and vibrant paintings. I have always encorporated textures into my artwork, in my embroidery. My contemporary approach to artwork is certainly influenced by my education in the modern art field and rural upbringing where I spent my time studying colours and introspectives of the world and self. I have so far been inspired by artists Jenny Saville (on her bold self-expression), Henrietta Harris (through her lineart and distortion), and others.

Where do I want to carry my art? I intend to continue carrying my art through identity and expression but lean into textiles and how my work may self-isolate or connect itself to outside itself. I will relate to new artists amd explore other contemporary approaches to portraiture (Francesca Woodman, Emma Tindale, Gavin Dobson, Sophie Goudman Peachey).

wet felting, wool painting. Experimetational eye creating a visceral dispersed eye; Acrylic painting drawing out the colour of skin and then replicating that onto wool.

       

       

no canvas. pinned on wall next to one another like a jigsaw

October 2026: Visceral portraiture express that through skin

Dialogue with felting and painting?

Scale and fragmentation? Exaggerated skin 

Grotesque facets 


Artists

  • Jenny Saville. Repeated artist. Large scale, creates fleshy skin through layering vibrant colours
  • Fancies Bacon also has some distorted colourful faces. Raw and passionate existence of humankind. Also quite visceral and expressive
  • Chantal Joffe less textured and visceral than I like and less focussed on skin. However I like the intensity of the wide eyes and eye contact in her work
  • Dorothea Tanning’s soft sculptures. Visceral body (fleshy) forms with soft textile materials. Tanning uses the material to create explicit sexual references whereas I will do it similarly but without the direct sexualisation of woman but instead the raw expression >> but I am doing it 2D not 3D to create a dialogue with painting and felting 


Theorists

  • Abjection. Kristeva. Read at the start of studio one but using again from a different angle. Intrigued by the disturbingness of the skin (vibrant colours makes u wanna look two but the face in return is distorted and unnatural). This unsettling/intriguingness is matched by creating the skin with textiles to create a strange soft layer like the “skin of milk” in her essay
  • Haptic visuality. Laura Marks. Invites viewer to (even mentally) touch surface texture. In this case soft felted textiles. Can this be significant as this is inviting to touch someone’s skin? Allows for a level of intrusion and vulnerability?


Creating visceral art through felting a traditional female material. Reinventing female handicraft to expand our self expression?