Powerful, sensual, painful, vulnerable, joyful - when I draw or paint the female figure I often contemplate what it means to inhabit my own body. Entrenched in a long art historical discourse dictated by ‘the male gaze’, my practice aims to reveal the nude in an autonomous, empowered and sensual way by reinterpreting old master drawings with my own life drawing observations and intuition. Either in the immediacy of an encounter or in the fragility of a memory, drawing is a personal and authentic form of expression in my practice. Drawing directly onto canvas with oil bar, my practice seeks to capture the qualities of a preparatory sketch. It is an exploratory process, allowing each mark to land as an expressive catalyst for the next. The staining nature of the medium mimics that of charcoal traditionally used in the academic style of figure drawing. Using bold colour pigments I aim to reject the ideas of classical draughtsmanship and question the hierarchy of painting by raising the status of the preparatory drawing to canvas.

Ottelien Huckin is a Bath and London based artist. Graduating from a degree in Fine Art: Painting at the Edinburgh College of Art in 2016 and a diploma from The Sotheby’s Institute: Foundations of Western History of Art in 2018, Ottelien has previously exhibited across the UK; including a solo show at 44AD artspace and gallery, Bath and The Mall Galleries, London with The Royal Society of British Artists: RBA Rome Scholarship. Most recently, Ottelien was a finalist for The Signature Art Prize 2019, showing her work at Bankside Hotel and Trinity Art Gallery, London.