Fenella Hodges
I explored the portrayal of emotion through colour . This manifested as two main ideas : the feeling of chaos , especially in relation to feminism , as inspired by my study of The Bacchae , and secondly the indefinable feeling of religious awe . In my study of Bacchic women , I used bright backgrounds and under-colours to give a sense of urgency but also to give a touch of femininity and beauty , fighting against the idea that female chaos is ugly or undesirable – a cultural assumption which colours the way we interact with the abstract concept of femininity and its physical ramifications . This idea meshed with my heaven and hell project , in which I tried to emulate infinity with chaos and repeating figures of bats and birds , inspired by medieval Islamic geometry and Christian art . I juxtapose bright romantic colours here with the muted tones in ‘ purgatory ’, depicting the true torment found in nothingness , the opposite of the infinities expressed in my other paintings . I explored different mediums , including sculpture , in which I used the suppleness of the clay to create an organic blend of multiple faces , which I also created in my paintings through the twinned use of blurring and definition . This is what drew me to glazing , which gives paintings a subtlety in their expression of forms . My interest in the conjoined feelings of chaos and our individual insignificance in the face of the universe led me to the conclusion that art is a way of connecting ourselves to our culture and the subjective past , but also the eternal truths of the world in which we live .