Profile | Lorraine Masters | Artist
Masters’ work focuses on female body image in contemporary society. The rise of the internet, Photoshop and other editing techniques has inspired a generation of self awareness. We are bombarded with sexualised, over edited imagery of the female form. The pressure to look like these models is immense, especially with our fascination with “selfies”. The internet is full of women sharing their bodies as well as their faces. Unfortunately, this is not always consensual. There is a worrying amount of leaked nudes, revenge porn and misappropriated selfies.
The media spends so much time taking apart the female form, that it is difficult for us not to do so. The work is about entering a self destructive mode. Psychological states can skew vision and actually change what we see. We fight a constant battle between the real and the imagined, the corporeal and the ultimate aesthetic. The work, at surface level, is drawing on the history of the female nude, especially in regard to the artistic canon. The difference is, throughout history the male has painted the female, in this circumstance the female is painting herself. The work is no longer the about male gaze but about one’s own gaze – the historical male objectivity versus the contemporary female subjectivity.
Biography
Lorraine Masters graduated from Limerick School of Art & Design in 2012 with a B.A. (Hons) in Fine Art Painting. She is currently an active member of Limerick’s Wickham Street Studios. She has shown in group exhibitions such as Wet,at Hive Emerging Gallery, The End is the Beginning, curated by Louise Marlborough in the Market Studios, Dublin and Mirror Mirror – Beauty and Perception, in 2020 Gallery, Cork. Masters had her first solo show Naked Truths, curated by Niamh Brown in the Atrium Gallery, The Backstage Theatre and Centre for the Arts, Longford.
Masters’ artwork features on the cover of Lorne Patterson’s novella Witch, published by Dark Hall Press in 2012. Masters has featured in a Graduate Profile in Midlands Art & Culture Magazine in 2013 and in an Artist Profile in the Longford Leader in 2013. Masters’ work was featured in the Exit Limerick Graduate reviews in conjunction with eva International 2012. Masters is also a Gallery Assistant in Ormston House in Limerick.
