Bella in a Vest (2016)

Chantal Joffe creates disarmingly raw portraits almost always depicting women and girls, often working from candid photographs. Appropriation of existing imagery is key to her work where she transforms photographic images into complex and engaging paintings. Her most recent work explores issues of female identity. Her paintings are alluring and revealing, laying bare distortions, quirks and imperfections with her loose, fluid brushstrokes. Her gestural style presents her subjects in positions that vary from relaxed to awkward; their comfort with the artist seemingly met by the discomfort of being observed and recorded.

Joffe’s subjects are often her family and friends, the intimacy of these relationships is present alongside the raw honesty of her work. This is particularly visible in her depictions of girlhood, which is a recurring motif in her work, she has painted her own daughter throughout her life. The large-scale portrait Bella in a Vest depicts a friend’s daughter sitting in a vest on a chair against a neutral backdrop. It combines the genres of childhood portrait and casual family snapshot. The palette used and the stylised blue stripes pay homage to the artist Alice Neel. Bella sits with her hands clasped in her lap, her cool gaze avoids meeting the viewer directly appearing both self-possessed and insecure. The juxtaposition of these attitudes captures the contradictions of adolescence and girlhood. Joffe often discusses her paintings in terms of transformation exploring aging and growing. In her work, she chronicles both the physicality and psychology of these changes.

Chantal Joffe is an artist whose practice bears a relationship with the existing works within Sunderland Museum’s collection particularly with artists disporting painterly images for emotional effect such as L.S Lowry and artists looking at transitions and identity such as Jeffrey Sarmiento or Bruce McCann. The addition of this work to Sunderland Museum’s collection expands the representation of female artists.

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