The Seventh Sense

Wednesday, September 14, 2011

For the exhibition on March 8, International Women's Day, G-Hotel, Penang.

I like to paint strong, bold or obnoxious women. I like to paint round, fat and voluptuous women w hich give the impression of warmth and steadfastness. My objects flow into each other and into all spaces; the dots show the interconnectedness of humans and their surroundings. There is no blank in this world.

“Explore your seventh sense...transcend the boundaries of your own imagination”.

You will find my women in compromising positions, either in love, exploring their physical sexuality, their spirituality, or in leisure, free from fear, guilt or shame. Nudity bordering on eroticism is equally prominent in my artwork as a direct response to the conservative and repressive society in which we live, for example, lack or no freedom in expressing religious, political or sexual preferences.

“Only when a woman is able to transcend her cultural, religious and racial boundaries, could she be empowered”. Women, and the environment they live in (physical or political), and the relationships they have feature very strongly in my work. But the women I paint are seldom (or never) in their traditional roles – roles dictated by a capitalist, male dominated world.

Is it surrealism, abstract expressionism or simply naive? I do not wish to replicate reality in my paintings but the message in my work is very real. Visible in my art is some form of resistance towards the given (traditional and conservative structures, rules and norms in art, e.g. perspective). There is no shading, shadow or strokes to define perspective or time. Perspective and the concept of time are defined by the conceptual rather than the physical.