Lizzie Hall

Recently I read about a group of Orcas attacking sailboats off the Iberian coast. Biologist Alfredo Lopez Fernandez theorised that the elder female Orca in the group had, at some point, suffered a ‘critical moment of agony’ (perhaps a collision with a boat), that had ‘flipped a behavioural switch’ which led to the attacks. The paintings in this exhibition came after a critical moment of agony in my life, and they are not like the paintings that came before them. They are not an attack, more an act of self defence; finding control in the figure, focussing on light and form, repeating the motif, restricting the palette.