Candid Arts

Background:

I come from an artistic background, my father, Francis Maguire was born in the suburbs of Liverpool where he worked as an Artistic Director for hair; he was of Irish decent and later adopted. On my mother’s side, my Great Grandmother was a 'Hardwick', who was a Suffragette activist and a tailor in the East End of London. My mother was born in London in the 50's in a feminist household, later she grew up in the county of Surrey where I was born at Guildford in 1984. This feminist influence has greatly affected my representational etymologies and how I connect my theory-based practice to my two-dimensional artworks.


Education:

2009-2010: Masters Degree in Curatorial Practice at University College Falmouth, Falmouth, Cornwall.
2005-2009: BA (Hons) Degree in Fine Art at University College for the Creative Arts, Farnham, Surrey.
2004-2005: BTEC National Diploma in Foundation Studies at University College for the Creative Arts, Epsom, Surrey.

Artist Statement:

My progressive art practices are explorations of ways in which to represent societal happenings through the means of painting, drawing and print making. The majority of my artworks explore the relationships between a man and a woman using metaphorical, visual language. The figurative works are portrayed in a profound complexity conveying sociological elements of couple togetherness and separation. These formed characters are represented to display a highly charged felt emotion in which the spectators can relate to from their own life scenarios. My conceptual ideas begin by primarily looking at articles in the consumerist media; mainly sourced from women’s magazines.

When dealing with my painting processes, influential artists such as, Lucien Freud, Alice Neel and Jennifer Anderson all affect my application methods when exploring the paradox of sexuality between male and female. I re-assess the psychological issues of the relationships between genders to portray a pictorial representation that conveys a defiant, sensitive mood of romanticism.

Artists that inspire my drawing practice are from the likes of the German Expressionists, particularly Kathe Kollwitz who resonated with empathy whilst making her work. Kollwitz shed light on the indictments of the social state of affairs in Germany during the late Nineteenth Century and early Twentieth Century. The artist drew the raw environments using the working poor, the suffering and the sick as subjects as a means to highlight the ongoing problems of humanity; which still co-exists in today's modern era.

Other practitioners that have influenced my etchings are Contemporaries such as, Ansel Krut, an artist who uses graphic satire and black humour to depict the barbaric and uncertain world. Also, Lynda Barry’s work, which conveys life as harsh but occasionally joyful, her artwork addresses themes of intolerance and psychic pain revealing some starkly left-wing ideas. Additionally, Jenny Holzer artwork, which consists of short statements, her use of language conveys a minimalist aesthetic quality about the world of consumerism. Her bold accounts using literal wording influenced my working coda. At times, I choose to include text in my drawings to voice the situations of my drawn characters in their given, created environment.

Objective:

To transfer and develop my quick etchings into paintings.

Influential Critical Theory:

Darwin, Marx, Nietzche were all three great evolutionists and relativisers of value- had between them demolished the transcendental buttresses and arches of humanity's belief systems. Their hypotheses were created to devise the purpose and support of class, caste and creed; which was entirely relative to their environment. Their concepts were created in relation to their particular power based, experiential surroundings.

Quotes Of Interest:

According to Sigmund Freud:
'Gender difference and sexual difference are central to the formation of identity and subjectivity, to our sense of ourselves as male or female, these structures underlie all forms of cultural and symbolic activity, both gender difference and sexual difference are central to our understanding of visual art.'
(Perry 1999: 235)

Lucy Lippard describes artworks made by women, she states:
‘…they provide a fascinating field of speculation for the question asked so often: is there a women’s art? And if so, what is it like? The overwhelming fact remains that a woman’s experience in society-social and biological-is simply not like that of a man.'
(Lippard 1995: 57)

Laura Mulvey quotes:
‘According to the principles of the ruling ideology and the psychical structures, the male cannot bear the burden of sexual objectification.' (Mulvey 20: 1999)

A Quote In Relation To Modernity And Feminism:

"I prefer to study...the everyday, the so-called banal, the supposedly un-or non-experimental, asking not "why does it fall short of Modernism?" but "how do classical theories of Modernism fall short of women's modernity?"
Meaghan Morris, "Things to Do with Shopping Centres"
(Felski 1995: 11)

Personal Beliefs:

Written descriptions of how Feminism stands, as a cultural issue, in these times of Modernity are varied and vast with differential, multiple, dissenting voices. Best described as a topic for many writers that rupture historical relativism and meaningful doubt, it tests the reader to question one’s own interest of revelation. It questions self intrigue, for both a man and a woman; about gender and sexuality issues and it is this subject of ambiguity; which still falls under the classification of being far from unresolved.

PhD Research/Hypthesis:
The Western Canon of Art, (as a cultural reading premise that explores the current setting of Modernity) still needs to evolve to express the realisation of gender and sexuality issues faced in today's society.