Chantal Joffe

Known for her expressive studies of women and children, these new large panels represent a move away from the intimacy characteristic of Chantal Joffe's previous work, and into a realm where the play between physical reality and imagery becomes more apparent.  Her fluid and deliberately disintegrating painting style is carried out on a scale that boldly distorts the familiar figurative elements of her work, and serves to heighten the sense of the physicality of paint and the process of painting itself. In these representations limbs become large areas of light and dark, backdrops and clothes turn into blocks of semi-abstract shapes and patterns. Coupled with Joffe's direct and unorthodox sense of characterization, her particular style of painting in turn gives an uncompromising sense of strength, complexity and momentum to the female figures she portrays.