The Day My Dad and Boyfriend Destroyed My Paintingsfeatured

When I graduated from University in 2012 after studying Visual Arts, I was left with an overwhelming amount of art work and nowhere for it to go. During my last year I got bored of using paint and instead started to paint portraits of people using make up, fake tan and hair dye instead.

My work was featured on Business Boom, with the following quoteL “I explore issues surrounding gender, identity, feminism and pop culture. Using silk screen printing, photography and cosmetics I address how modern culture, film and the media have an impact on society; shaping the identity of both men and women. Much of my work focuses upon the depiction of children – their faces caked in make up to explore the growth of child beauty pageants in the UK.”

But really, I just liked to paint using make up because it was fun, messy and piss easy to use compared to proper paint.

I created 14 giant make up paintings on wood, each one four foot square. Despite visiting my degree show, leaning on one of my paintings and leaving the show with foundation on her blouse, my Grandma kindly let me store them in her garage once university was over. She was happy to keep hold of them until I found a buyer. What she wasn’t planning on is having to store them for so long.

To be honest, I was pretty certain that I’d be able to sell them. I mean why wouldn’t someone want to hang these terribly creepy giant make up paintings of small children on their walls? But more than two and a half years later, they were still in my Grandma’s garage and she wanted them to go.

After trying to sell them on Facebook to current art students or strangers who may just want some cheap wood, I made the decision to get rid. My Dad and boyfriend Jake were only too happy to help, and I think that secretly they enjoyed smashing the paintings up.

It took us ages to carry the paintings from my Grandma’s house to my parents’ house. But thankfully we live less than a five minute walk away. After dragging them into my parents’ garden, Dad and Jake proceeded to smash them up while Mum and I just took photos. Luckily, just as we were about to say goodbye to some of my favourite paintings, the phone rang and my Dad went inside to chat to a mate.

It was then that Jake and I discovered that after all this time, we could have easily taken off the wood from the back of the paintings to make them lighter and ensure they took up less space. So Jake kindly helped me sneak a couple of my favourites into my parents’ garage to keep for a while longer.

Here are just a few photos from that awful awful day.

And here are some photos from happier times when I was busy making the paintings at uni:

I didn’t just create big paintings, I also filled a corridor with 400 little ones, got my Grandma to dress up as The Godfather, and used tacky Photoshop filters to create spooky baby faces.

And at the end of it all, I took part in two degree shows. I was pretty sure Saatchi would turn up and invite me to present my work in a gallery, but that didn’t happen.