KATHARINE WADE

Outside In (a platform for artists who encounter significant barriers to the art world due to health, disability, social circumstance, or isolation) received funding from the Jerwood Collection to host an online course for a small number of West Midlands based artists called Step Up: Exploring Collections. Focusing on the artworks in their collection the students spent 10 weeks discussing and interpreting different parts of the collection. While simultaneously developing their own sketchbook and taking part in group crits and feedback.

This course encouraged the students to develop their practice in new ways in supportive and non judgemental environments.

We were asked to pick one artwork to focus on and respond to while creating a final piece of work

I was drawn to Dig for Victory by Daphne Charlton. I was drawn to the vulnerability in the simple watercolour, the implications of hard work and sacrifice without getting much in return. I began thinking about the relationship between pride and patriotism vs historic reality. What does it mean to be from somewhere?

“Spencer and Daphne spent their time painting together and this work was a collaboration they produced as a poster for the village hall. Daphne later recalled that she had painted the background representation of Cookham, the ‘dragonfly’ planes and probably the five-pronged fork. When she had finished her part and began to colour in a potato, she was ‘soundly slapped’ by Stanley and ordered away to make tea.”

Sacrifice for everyone else, your whole world, but her patriarchy still takes everything and thanks her for nothing. Dig for Victory for a thankless world.

I attempted to draw myself as Daphne, to create a modern version of what this watercolour meant. The more I practiced the more I realised that I avoid looking at my own face as much as possible, to avoid what I don’t like about myself. So the project evolved to being a effort to draw myself unbeautifully, just as I am, to separate myself from my perception and make myself into art. Maybe as art I can simultaneously separate myself and connect with my self. For my self, a simple self portrait is anything but. Its exposing and vulnerable and unusual. And to use such strong colours, again is alien. What is simple for some is like climbing a mountain to others.