Several sources influenced this series: women seen on Berck beach, ‘Plumpers’ in a magazine of that title, Julia Kristeva’s work on abjection, anti-feminist quotes from Elizabethan and Jacobean literature and, lastly, goddesses in mythology. At first my large, single women seemed marooned, isolated and abject. However, as I painted more of them they seemed forceful, ecstatic and reminded me of deities like Brigid or Venus. The title ‘Ecstasy’ refers not just to sexual poses but to the kind of painting they inspired. I painted loose expanses of flesh contained by wiry lines and then, in contrast to linear limits, poured veils of diluted acrylic over the boundaries. My ‘ecstatic’ women are ‘going outside themselves’, as in the origin of the word ‘ecstasy’, and the streaming paint destroys contours to suggests liberation and possibility.
