Force of Nature, 2013
180cm x 120cm.
Digital tapestry on wooden stretcher.
Limited edition of eight.
Commissions by application to the artist.
This piece references Jacques le Moyne de Morgues’ A Young Daughter of the Picts watercolour from c 1585. Le Moyne de Morgues who had sailed to Florida as the ship’s botanical artist had come back with sketchbooks full of paintings of exotic “New World’ flowers.
On return he had created a series of imagined portraits of Scottish indigenous people in the form of Pictish warriors, including armed women. However, this woman was adorned not with native Scottish floral blue tattooes derived from Woad pigments, but his full colour painted flowers from Florida.
I had admired this image for many years. But I felt there was also an opportunity to retell the story. As we know, indigenous peoples all over the world have been marginalised, colonised and oppressed. It is calculated that only 6% of the global human population remain indigenous, despite the fact that they manage of roughly 20-25% of the earth’s land surface. Civilisation has cast them out.
It felt appropriate to incorporate this into the image, replacing her face with an image of her own demise. The naked woman, adorned with tattooes in warrior pose presented an iconic image of female fertility and strength, along with this symbol of the demise of her long- gone culture. How alike our own culture was the Pictish culture? Like their culture, would ours eventually disappear too?
For more information on this artwork please click here.
Force of Nature is also included in See All This, Issue #38, Summer 2025, curated by Catherine De Zegher. https://seeallthis.com/en/
