Victoria Heald

Victoria's work looks at the intensity of the painted figure through pose, gesture, expression and look. The changing surfaces, materials and compositions act to heighten the figurative image in each piece. Whilst the figures are painted thinly in oils, the backgrounds use light-reflective acrylic paints, taking the subject out of their original context and slipping them into a non-existent space of painting.

In her Mythology series, seen for the first time in this exhibition, Victoria uses people she knows as models and directs them into figures from Mythological stories. This creates a contrast between the modern sitter and classical references. The show also includes new pieces in the popular Dancing Girl series, which originated as a study into sequential movement. Victoria took a series of photographs of her friend Annie dancing, painted images from the photographs and placed them together to represent the movement in the original shoot.