Margaux Derhy

Intimacy, grief, healing – my work deals with these subjects which, although so central to much of contemporary film, photography and literature, are I find strangely absent from contemporary painting.

The works for the RCA2021 online exhibition, completed during the past two years, explore the continued fragility of our relationships and the impact on our inner self. How we protect our relationships with other human beings and how we deal with the consequences of break ups or the deaths of loved ones, are all questions I believe crucial for our personal future and which has become even more relevant during this pandemic.

I am primarily a painter but during my education time at the Royal College, I have extended my practice to embroidery, ceramic, blown glass and more recently video. It seems to me that becoming multidisciplinary bears witness to my desire to have an intense and curious engagement with the transitioning world around us.

In my paintings, I try to give form to emotions that manifest from other realms and dimensions beyond the domains of everyday life. My imagery is rooted in the cornerstones of our earthly existence — life and death, isolation and connection, and love and loss — and is realized through oil painting layers of cold and contrasting colors.

In my other works, I am first looking for experimentation challenge and the opportunity to share my imagery differently. I really wanted to collaborate with people (from craftsmen for the embroideries and blown glass to artists for the animated video) and feel this exploration has enabled me to express a new gradient in my emotive and spiritual spectrum.

By developing a personal work around self-mythology, surrealism and fantasy and by playing with perception, I propose a pictorial work that is somehow a tribute to companions that we meet and lose on the road of life.