MNG Presents

The Maiden and The Fatale

By Brooklyn Payne

“In my work I am interested in presenting life as theatre, with personal identity being the central performance. Using oil paint on canvas as my medium allows me to create theatrical compositions and tap into the formal relationship that theatrical staging and painting historically share. Through these series of works I was considering female archetypes that appear in Greek myths and the role that these women have in their stories – and further how these fictional interpretations of women transfer to real-world interactions. 

These works are not didactic narratives, they only suggest that a narrative exists. The stories that a viewer constructs will be individual to them and how they interpret the actors’ dynamics, the sets, and the props in conjunction with one another. My theory on what the narrative is, is not the one true interpretation of the story, just as there is no one definitive experience that a person has in their own identity”.

See the exhibition in the Main Space Gallery from March 22-April 1.