Artwork Information

In a 1983 interview Jacqueline Fahey said, 'When I use the term "feminist artist" I mean I am a woman (and that helps), but by marrying, having children, and being confined by that experience, I am leading the life most women lead. I would even after that not call myself a feminist artist if I did not use that experience and physical world as the material to comment politically on that special way of spending one's life. However, it's not that I have consciously set out to do feminist paintings. It is how they have turned out and I am glad they turned out that way'. She is aware that such perspectives can be viewed with distrust. 'If in the arts the belief that what is right, normal and the proper way of seeing things is male, upper class and Pākeha, all other ways of seeing things are as difficult to comprehend as a new language'. In this witty self-portrait a naked, middle-aged woman literally paints herself as she calmly applies red lipstick, her pose a pastiche of the traditional reclining nude. As a counter to the identity-vacuum of the conventional artist's model, Fahey gazes out from a swarming mêlée of food, family, clothes, alcohol and the furniture of life; her identity, composure, intelligence and sense of humour are firmly intact. (from The Guide, 2001)