Ongoing Series…

Some days the face I show the world comes easily. Other days it feels carefully assembled.

This series began as a way of thinking about beauty standards but grew into an exploration of masking – the subtle adjustments we make to appear acceptable, capable or safe. Through woven portrait collages, the work considers how expectations become internalised until they begin to shape not only how we are seen, but how we see ourselves.

A Man Had The Audacity
Analogue collage on paper, 2024

Created for the We Also Fight Windmills exhibition, A Man Had The Audacity explores the pressures placed on women to perform an idealised version of femininity. Six faces taken from beauty magazines are cut apart and woven together to create three new portraits, reflecting the ways identity can become shaped, distorted and reconstructed by social expectations. The work considers beauty standards not as personal choices, but as systems of control that influence how women see themselves and how they believe they should be seen.

Install shots by Ania Ready from We Also Fight Windmills, Fairway Gallery, Oxford. Also exhibited at Curiously in Berwick-upon-Tweed.

Face of the Day
Analogue collage on wooden panels, 2025

Face of the Day continues this exploration of identity through a series of woven collages. Two contrasting portraits – one conforming to conventional ideals of feminine beauty and one resisting them – are interwoven using a different pattern in each work, creating shifting balances between the two. The title reflects the daily act of choosing a face to present to the world, exploring masking, neurodiversity and the ongoing negotiation between authenticity and social acceptance.

Exhibited at We Also Fight Windmills, Hundred Heroines Museum, Nailsworth, 2025.

Further works in progress.