Through the activity of painting and drawing I have been investigating both the perceived and actual, personal and cultural questions and pressures surrounding the female form in relation to beauty, sexuality and society.I have been exploring the boundary between the interior and the exterior of the body, the exterior becoming defined by either a line or stain and more recently the skin of paint itself becoming an area of fusion and dialogue between the socio political boundary of body, image and painting.Within the history of art the female body has mostly been represented by the male artist, through the feminist movements there was a change, women represented from a female standpoint. In an inversion of Yves Klein’s female body prints I have moved to reclaim the controversial space, opened up by him, by reversing the activity of his practice. Where he printed paint onto the canvas with the bodies of others, I have used my body to remove a skin/layer of paint from the painted surface, thereby reclaiming the surface of the canvas. The thin skin like layer of paint remains on the surface, whilst the removed paint on my body is discarded, the absence within the skin of the paint retains the presence of my physical existence.Through the drawings I am focusing on the interiority of the body, on its bodily/biological functionality. Through careful choice of materials, I aim to create a dialogue in relationship to the paintings, giving them a skin like quality, the viewer now looking beyond the surface of the skin into the body.The drawings based on the human body are biological fabrications allowing my imagination to connect parts of the body emotionally rather than factually. In society, the innards and the subject of the inner workings of the body is still broadly taboo as subject, the drawings themselves although not shocking, have a narrative in connection with the workings of the body which I feel is important in any dialogue beyond the surface appearance / appeal of the body.Alongside my studio work, I have been researching the notions of sexuality, functionality and female representation; research has been and continues to be an integral part of my practice. Writers such as Lucy Lippard, Naomi Wolf and Susie Orbach specifically have been invaluable in helping me to understand this vast subject. My work investigates the perceived and actual, personal and cultural pressures on women to conform to an aesthetic ideal and questions how idealised beauty and sexuality effects women’s culture and contemporary relationship to sexuality. The artists that I have found particularly inspirational are Helen Chadwick, Eve Hesse, Judy Chicago, Annette Messenger, Carolee Schneemann and Wayne Thiebaud.