Girls, Girls ...

A face can be the image of a time. In the 1960s was Twiggy the role model for an ideal belle. Girls dreamed to be as skinny and androgynous as her.


Since the 1990s Kate Moss is the paragon of beauty. Her style is copied from girls all over the world. Peter Lindbergh took this photograph in 1994. Maybe she stands in front of a stable or a shelter? In her overall she looks like a farmer or worker.


This portrait is a fashion statement and not a documentation of the American West like Richard Avedon’s girl. But both girls look like somebody from the countryside. Maybe Kate Moss´ expression is more impressive, because we are more used to look at her in commercials and advertisements. However it is only the background information that makes the difference between these two portraits. We have to believe that the subtitle is telling us about the person. Certainly we can take a closer look at the picture to find evidences of posing or artificiality. Even though we can scarcely distinguish illusion and reality.


Cindy Sherman is a perfect example for considering the substance of an image. She is always questioning herself in her portraits. She appears in various roles to find out about prejudices and female prototypes. Sherman is a master of disguise and costumes. If we did not know, that she is the one on the picture, would we realize it? The artist became famous for her “Film Stills”.
Her pictures are composed masterpieces, but I do not think that this makes her photographs less true than others. She is still telling a story. Maybe it is not an authentic one, but one who is transmitting a message or a feeling.

Sherman is always caught in a moment of action. Some picture could be an excerpt taken from a Hitchcock movie. You always feel the suspense: What will happen next? Who is the girl waiting for in the lonely outback? Is she expecting her lover or her murderer? What does she do there? But we do not need to be afraid, because the camera is with her.


Lauren Greenfield and Rineke Dijkstra convey the impression that they show real life. They portray young girls in their self-conflicts and process of self-discovery. These girls are mostly concerned about their bodies and their appearances. They are confronted with thin models and digital picture manipulation. Girls compare themselves with other girls and successful models in magazines. They do not want to be ordinary, but they also refuse to be too different than others.

If you look closer at these portraits then these questions arise: Am I beautiful? Does somebody admires me? Does somebody love me? Who am I? Who do I want to be? Do I satisfy my requirements?

Johan Andersson

Oil on canvas

Oil on canvas 110x90cm

"My portraits are a reflection of myself and visions which I get. My emotions are revealed in the eyes of the sitter and the techniques I employ compliment the honest moment which I aim to capture. I explore the theme of beauty and vulnerability in youth and I challenge certain ideas by distorting the figure, sometimes using turpentine to disrupt the surface of paint.

I am diversely spontaneous in the way I work the paint. I don't see any limits to painting nor do I limit myself as an artist. The portraits are full of intrigue in their subtle contradictions, giving them an ambiguous and awkward underlying tension. My work also challenges perceptions of beauty and identity. They lie somewhere in between dream and reality and they play with preconceptions, causing conflict between mind and reality thus creating a cognitive dissonance.

My faith as a Christian is key to my practice and drives me to travel and see different cultures and experience new things, giving me inspiration and growth. There is an intimacy between the portrait and the viewer in my work and I want to challenge what it means to be human, appreciate and be in awe of the subjects which I have chosen. Their diversity makes it fascinating to look at and be connected to them. I want the viewer to come as close as they possibly can to the portrait and for the portraits to be exposed."

Seren Jones

Mrs Clements Edmunds (a young Elizabeth) 2010, Oil on Canvas, 300x400

Untitled (German Woman), 2010, Oil on Canvas, 300x400

Women are a central theme in my work and I strive to create images using elements of classical painterly language, with a subtle contemporary, feminist twist. I explore classical painting and portraiture for inspiration and guidance when painting my portraits.

The conventional portrait painter seeks to create a visual record of a real person, however the women in my work are not based on one sitter they are a gathering of many different influences I have collected, from other people‟s faces (both male and female), other artwork, to pure imagination. In my pictures I bring the iconic and the nameless together to create someone that has never existed. This fabrication may mean these women are more like self-portraits than portraits.

Unlike most women in classical painting and contemporary media, who are often depicted merely as objects of male desire, I wish to paint women of a powerful nature. Their arresting gaze which actively seeks connections with their viewers, asking questions perhaps they cannot answer whilst also revealing a wealth of mysterious female narratives. Through the gaze their strength is exposed, yet it is of great importance that this “strength” is not interpreted as an acquired masculine quality, but that it is seen as their own “feminine” strength that belongs to them as women in their own right. These ladies all have their own stories. They inhabit floating worlds, ambiguous environments, which enhances their strange captivating virtues.

Costume is another important aspect of my paintings. Often I adorn the women in fantastical, colourful dress that suggest a more historical context yet, by using „abstract‟ accents, I add to their indefinable qualities. Their theatrical costume allows them to become other-worldly whilst also exposing some of their private selves to the viewer.

Through my exploration of women‟s aesthetic I wish to question the nature of female gender and beauty and the viewer and society‟s relationship to the work.