Scarlett Lawrence – Flaws and Imperfections

I have always had a fondness for portraits and saw this title as an ideal vehicle to explore portraiture in diverse and exciting ways. After initial investigations looking at artists such as Mark Powell, Paul Wright and Cristina Trouffa, I developed my ideas by introducing increasingly more abstract elements inspired by one of my favourite artists, Christina Quarles. Quarles’s painting “Burden of yer own making” was the source of my Y12 Articulation presentation, where I competed in the reginal final at the Whitworth gallery in Manchester. Quarles’s work speaks of her struggles with feeling restrained and trapped by societal norms at odds with her own lived experience. My large scale painted final outcome included a combination of abstract elements inspired by Quarles and an observational painting of my friend Jasmine trapped and suffocating behind clingfilm.