Katie Tobin

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I like to talk to artists a little bit about the interplay between text and image. I was wondering if we could talk about ‘The Romance of the Rose’ and how the poem has shaped your work for the show.

So, ‘The Romance of the Rose’ is a poem by Guillaume de Lorris. It’s a French poem, but it was very popular in the medieval period and made into many manuscripts. There’s a whole visual tradition that goes alongside ‘The Romance of the Rose’, so for me, it has been a starting point for the work and a tool to spark my imagination.

The story has a rich visual history because it was illustrated many times in small pictures inside Manuscripts and other old books, in this case a story that could instruct ‘The Lover’. The illuminations differ in style depending on the scribe. I have been looking at a manuscript from the National Library of Wales (Roman de la rose). Most of the illuminations are found in the first section of the poem written by Gulliame de Lorris (ff.3-26v) the second part of the poem was completed later by Jean de Meun. Female characters are delicately painted in the first pages of this manuscript, the women depict vice or ‘bad behaviour’, ‘Envie’, ‘Avarice’, and ‘Hate’. My work reaches for these visual cues. I am looking at the illuminations, taking in the detail, to observe the painting technique and the delicate colours that are used. I enjoy looking at the images, they have a strange beauty, absurdity, there is a rich earth red – I have been trying to mix this colour in the studio. I have painted a large section of red in a work titled The Pleasures Dance (2024).

I’m especially drawn to how ‘The Romance of the Rose’ presents courtship. There are many kinds of rituals of courtship within it – they can be quite humorous and quite bizarre for a contemporary reader. And then there’s this quite performative aspect to the text, but also this power play between different members of society. The text also explores women’s position within the medieval period. There’s a lot of quite violent patriarchal language around plucking a rose and the taking of a lover. I think within a contemporary setting this is quite interesting. de Lorris seems to think about women’s bodies and how they are treated, as well as women’s position in society. And I suppose this creates an imaginary space for me to play around with those themes within the image that I’m making.

That’s kind of one of the key aspects of your work, the fact that you choose women who sort of defy conventional representation, mad women and crones. And I was wondering how you select these figures, and archetypes as well, that you choose to paint?

I’ve always loved reading. One source of inspiration for me is Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, particularly ‘The Wife of Bath’ prologue. I loved her gruesome language and her humour. She’s a very powerful character. And I think that for this show, taking ‘The Romance of the Rose’ as a starting point, there’s an understanding that Chaucer probably read the text and was aware of some of the characters when he wrote ‘The Wife of Bath’. There’s a connection between the two.

Another archetype that’s important for my work is Medea. There are many operas about Medea – Pier Pasolini made a film about Medea with Maria Callas; I’m a big Pasolini fan. Callas was a Greek singer, and as Medea, she represents chaos in a time before the classical period in art and architecture. I quite like the juxtaposition with a character like Medea – this classical form or figurative sculpture – and then contrasting that with this messy female body, Medea as this incredibly flawed character who is also very violent. This contrast between those two elements is a way of thinking about ‘what is the female figuration in painting, what is the history and the legacy of female bodies within painting?’ These archetypes of very dramatic characters can sometimes be a useful tool to navigate being a painter and finding a subject.

I guess about showing its women in radically different contexts as well. So, you’ve got women in cinema, but ballet as well, in these different artistic pursuits. One of the more surreal aspects was the fetish-wear magazines, and punk feminists as well. How do you go about balancing such a broad range of sources in your work?

To start off, the costuming of fetish-wear is useful because I work from photographs. I really like to work from images where the clothing is very tight so I can see the form clearly. Fetish-wear is very coquettish, it’s about revealing. Recently I’ve been painting more nude figures; playing with nudity is something that fetish-wear does, and I’m playing with control, this kind of subjugation, this kind of giving of the body. It also adds to the uncomfortable feeling that exists within paintings, that feeling of posing or being poised.

As we’ve talked about, I also draw from literature and imagery from the Middle Ages as a period of decline: from high culture and civilisation of the classical world, viewed as a time of ignorance and superstition.

You were also talking about the staging of your paintings, and it’s great to be surrounded by them. There is that really tight composition and a staged aspect as well, different levels of depth of position. How do you compose your paintings and what choices go into staging the figures like this?

I’m really interested in fresco painting. There’s this flatness in the early 14th-century frescoes. Giotto, the Arena Chapel frescoes, would be a good touch point for that. When I look at frescoes, I’m often struck by a stage-like shallow depth of field. In my work, I want the viewer to engage with the figure centre-stage.  Often, I push the figure right to the front of the picture plane, and the space behind is very limited, so there is this sense that there isn’t very much space behind. I think that adds to the intensity of the figures, and it allows them to have the most impact.

But when I’m trying to encourage depth within the work, I am relying on abstracted forms, washes of colour, the richness or depth within that colour, or a suggestion of architecture and changing the scale. These are all very abstracted tools. The realism that exists within the work is coming more from the faces or the bodies and the background is a kind of stage for them.

Circling back to the feminist aspect of your work. I’m wondering how that broad span of cultural references and inspirations lend themselves to contemporary feminist discourse, and what you’d like to say about that.

I think that the work is joyful and that there is freedom allowed to the female figures which I find incredibly liberating, interesting, and powerful. They are quite complex, so there are many suggestions of different expressions or different actions within the work. I love to read Angela Carter, so maybe she is where I base some of my feminist ideas about narrative, in her magical realism and her wonderful stories.

I’ll use another example: I think when I first saw Artemisia Gentileschi’s work at her exhibition at the National Gallery in late 2020, her visceral Judith Beheading Holofernes, I appreciated her originality and her ability to tell stories that are both dramatic and violent in a painting. She was working in the 17th century at a time when women artists were not easily accepted, yet she still took on themes traditionally associated with male artists and transformed her subjects from meek maidservants into courageous conspirators. For me, it’s about my work using historical or classical sources, like Medea, that male directors have used for many years, and thinking about that now or continuing the conversation, and threading it through.

To add to that, punk feminism is an interesting one. As a movement, an ideology, punk has a liberated sense of chaos that I like leaning into with my composition.

And just as a final question, I was going to ask, is there anything else you’re working on at the moment?

As an artist, you want to always be experimenting and pushing yourself, and it’s really important to foster research and creative stability in the practice. I’m going to continue to grow the visual language. And in terms of what’s coming up next, I’m going to take a break and get back into painting and experimentation which is much easier to do when you don’t have a deadline.

Brilliant. Thank you so much.
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Image credit: Jooney Woodward.

Ella Walker (b. 1993, Manchester, United Kingdom) is a British artist who is based in London. Using both traditional and contemporary painting techniques and materials, the artist works from a myriad of source imagery – iconography, medieval manuscripts, and classical sculpture to modern ballet, fashion and the cinema of Fellini and Pasolini – unifying historic and contemporary figures and narratives within a single picture plane. Ella received her BA in Painting and Printmaking from The Glasgow School of Art, Glasgow, before joining The Royal Drawing School, London, where she earned a Postgraduate Diploma in 2018.

Ella Walker: The Romance of the Rose is on view at Pilar Corrias Savile Row, London from 11 September–9 November 2024.