Hyphenation as a critical tool for painting

This thesis explores how the hyphen may be useful in mapping a critical framework for painting. Through an examination of painting’s modernist discourses and its gendered implications, I explore the female subject and her articulations through psychoanalysis and abstract painting in particular. I explore cultural paradoxes, affective adjustments and improvisation within painting strategies and experiment with different media and disciplines to contrive different interpretative contexts for my painting. I portray the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland as a hyphen and connect this to my identity. I examine feminist applications of humour and negation within my practice to give scope to Griselda Pollock’s notion of double field, in which I offer shape-fussing as a way of opening up relations between aesthetic elements.

HERmetics_In _The_Studio - How Painters Think

Musings on works included in an upcoming exhibition at the Outset Gallery Galway with my HERmetics pals in a show called How Painters Think. You can find that here.