Gabrielle Devine

Taking figures from popular culture and advertising, my work unravels the glamour and gloss to reveal the same figures in an empathetic yet humorous way.

Through my process of drawing and painting, I begin by looking at male directed photoshoots of women, seeing beneath the immediate beauty, vulnerability and self consciousness in the body language and expressions of the women. By painting these figures I use imagination and projection to invest the nameless figure with human subjectivity and emotion.

My work often strays so far from the glamorous original, exaggerating details or skewing proportions so that the women I paint are no longer perfect, instead my depictions are humorous and lighthearted but also convey a deeper sense of vulnerability and emotion that a female audience may relate to.

Final paintings retain aspects of the original, e.g the bright borders of magazine layouts, while also transforming them, morphing them into a contrary vision of female beauty.