Vanessa Raw

In painting some of these women from life, Raw threads a genuine element of connection throughout the creation of her works. Many of her groupings of models are friends in reality, painted on the beach or in the artist’s studio, and the process encourages a sense of freedom and psychological presence. Raw depicts their skin in warm and fleshy hues, punctuated by deep pulses of purple and grey. Their poses veer between seductive and protective, with women variously arching their backs or curling cosily around other bodies.

Within these tableaux, she also includes compositions of figures taken from pornographic online imagery, which typically represents a performance of sexuality rather than an authentic expression of it. The performance of same-sex intimacy between women for the heterosexual male gaze is deeply entrenched in contemporary culture.

These women, displaced in Raw’s paintings from their original settings, challenge the viewer to untangle their own loaded judgements of female sexuality. Do we view them as fulfilling their own desires or acting for the gaze of someone else? Where do we draw the line between the sensual, erotic, and pornographic?

Here, women explore and play for the joy of themselves and those around them. This transformation of the pornographic setting remoulds the artist’s own past sexual experiences into something more positive, in which she is in control.

Raw references the feeling of internal peace that is afforded by being within nature. There is a sense that her figures are grounded within or part of the world around them, their nudity an extension of their organic surroundings rather than an explicitly sexual gesture. Women drape their arms gently on one another’s shoulders or lean their faces against fellow models’ waists. Others lie back restfully in the soft grass. Some compositions could be read as having ritualistic or religious undertones. In ‘Don’t Let Them Take Your Soul’, for example, a woman’s arms are dangled over the shoulders of two others, reminiscent of Christ’s removal from the cross; the circles of women in nature could also be seen to have pagan undertones, liberating her protagonists from the sin and stigma attached to the female body in many religions that pushed out such practices.

Deeper layers of symbolism can be found in Raw’s inclusion of animals throughout the exhibition. Many of these creatures have rich resonance within psychology, mythology, and spiritual practices. They often come instinctively to the artist while painting or take root in recurring dreams.

While she does not ascribe strict meaning to these and leaves them open to the viewer’s interpretation, there are hints at more sinister or unconscious elements entering the works. Her golden lion in ‘If Tomorrow Was Judgement Day’, with a proud mane and one large paw softly placed on the arm of a nude woman, is a rare male presence. He could be seen to represent the internal strength of the artist and women in the painting. But perhaps he is also an intruder into this space of solace.

Raw responds to the real world, in which women’s bodies experience violence and contempt, often cutting off a direct relationship with the source of pleasure within. Her paintings put forth an emancipated alternative, inviting an inquisitive experience of the body, full of potential for unity with one another and the natural world. Within this shame-free Garden of Eden, human connection is allowed to run wild.

– Text By Emily Steer