ARTIST'S MISSION
My work is informed by my own life experience as a mature woman, enriched by the stories, silences, and scars passed down through my family lineage.
I am inspired by the great colourists Matisse and David Hockney and feminist artists, such as Alice Neal, Marlene Dumas, and Mickalene Thomas. Also the pioneering photographers Ute Barth, Sara Moon, Saul Leiter.
As a multidisciplinary artist, I use my creative practice to highlight the deeply ingrained and systemic violence that women have endured across generations—violence that can be physical, psychological or financial in nature, and which often emanates from the very families meant to nurture us.
Family histories are not isolated—they are shared threads in the fabric of patriarchal oppression that seeks to control, suppress, and silence women.
Through visual art my work seeks not to romanticise pain, but to give voice to the truths hidden in the shadows of “family loyalty” and “tradition.” By working with autobiographical content, I explore the intersections of memory, inheritance, and agency, asking how we can stop systemic violence, while honouring the resilience of those who came before us.
« Feminism never killed anyone.
Misogyny kills every day. »
Benoîte Groult
Writer, Feminist, Politician, Journalist and Novelist (1920 – 2016)
background
I am a child of the swinging seventies, born and raised in the south of England. As a child, I wanted to be a painter, like my mother. However, after failing the entrance exam for the art school foundation course at the tender age of seventeen, I persuaded myself that I was not an artist and I studied French, Italian and Art history at the University of Kent, in Canterbury.
I left my family and the UK on the day of my graduation to live in Paris with my future husband. I worked in English language training, translation and freelance journalism, while raising our two daughters.
I started a photography business in 2017 and wrote essays for the feminist magazine Foto Femme United, throughout 2021.
During the pause imposed by the Covid pandemic, when I spent most of the lockdowns paining in our tiny loft space, I decided to return to my teenage ambition and applied to art school. I graduated in June 2024 from the Ecole des Beaux Arts, in Versailles, France.
EXHIBITIONS
October 2024 – La Nuit de la Création – Exhibition of a photographic commission “Versailles Intemporel”, at the Open University of Versailles.
January 2024 - Affinités IV - Group exhibition at the gallery of the École des Beaux-Arts, Versailles.
May / June 2023 – La Fête de l’Estampe 11e - Group exhibition in engraving at the gallery of the École des Beaux-Arts, Versailles.
February 2023 - Affinités III - Multidisciplinary group exhibition at the gallery of the École des Beaux-Arts, Versailles.
2021 - 2022 - Barcelona Foto Biennale, Fine Art & Documentary Photography with a series of photographs of the Chateau de Versailles.
EDUCATION.
2022 - 2024
BFA at the Ecole des Beaux Arts, Versailles, France.
2017
Registered business owner as Auteur/Artiste Photography.
2010 – 2014
Photography workshops in Paris with American photographer, Meredith Mullins.
1986
B.A.Hons French/Italian/Art History - The University of Kent at Canterbury, UK.
awards.
2020
First prize in the Architecture category of the 15th Julia Margaret Cameron Awards for Woman Photographers.