JENNY SCOBEL

Technically, Scobel’s medium is drawing, as she works in graphite on gessoed wood panels. The tinting of almost photorealist images with watercolour, and the application of wax as a final layer, creates a somewhat confounding hybrid between drawing, painting and photography.

The subject matter itself also proves strangely elusive. These are clearly portraits, but of whom? Backgrounds shift from landscapes and room-like settings to bold patterns, which may correspond to the clothing of the women themselves. The materiality of the carefully crafted surface draws attention to the fact that each drawing is just that: a two-dimensional, painted panel. This creates a narrow space, simultaneously two- and three-dimensional, where the women become trapped in a nonexistent depth between surface and background. The use of repeatedly collaged faces also raises the question of the depicted women’s relationship to ‘their’ bodies, and the work as a whole. Are they free to wander from drawing to drawing, taking on bodiesand settings as they see fit, or are they merely being used as building blocks by the artist?