Rebecca Fortnum

About Rebecca Fortnum

L'inconnue de la Seine [2010]
Pencil on paper, 60 x 40cm
Donated by the artist 2013

The artist writes:

I have been making draiwing of the L'inconnue de la Seine, a face that has inspired many writers and artists (high and low),  The stories she provokes interweave fact and fiction, her image is embedded in words.  In this series drawing functions as an act of resuscitation; the figure is revived by the movements of the pencil - literally drawn back to life - referencing L'inconnue's reincarnation as Rescue Annie.

This work was shown at the Museum of Childhood.

Random Blonde [2000]
Oil on canvas, 183 x 152 cm
Donated by the artist 2005.

The artist writes:

'Although we live in rooms, our thoughts can often be elsewhere. The body can stay still whilst the mind wanders. My paintings are about that dual experience of being in the world, being in one place but thinking about another. The paintings invite you to move, to walk round them. From a distance they can be seen as a whole but close up, as the surface is examined, they are experienced differently. They refer to the scale of modernists abstraction but quite literally something more personal, transient and provisoinal is inscribed into their surface. The words here are from pop songs, confessional and emotive but at the same time rather commonplace; we've all been there, felt these things. There is a sense of absence, no melody, no people, yet their scale is architectural, inviting the viewer in. We can engage both emotionally and physically, putting ourselves into the paintings.'

Random Blonde is part of a series exhibited under the title Solipsist at the Angel Row Gallery, Nottingham.