Elly Smallwood

Intimacy often emerges from a moment. A quick glance, a touch, vulnerable and vulnerable, but at the same time seductive and attractive. All these aspects are shown by Elly Smallwood in her oil paintings. Usually she paints women, their bodies and faces, in their own language, which shows both a deep sensitivity for these women and the fascination for their bodies.

Intimate portraits show close-ups of faces, reveal feelings and a touching closeness. The powerful, spontaneous graceful brush strokes characterize the emotionality of the works. Instinctively one feels the special moment, loses itself in the raw, organic forms of the faces, which are captured by the artist.

The intimacy of the works is also produced by the clear sexuality of the naked bodies. Smallwood emphasizes the feminine forms, but leaves the face often empty, as if the body additions to the portraits. A sense of aesthetics is mixed here with the fearlessness of fetish and the simultaneous surrender to the female body with a strong female image. The artist paints sketched forms in a wide range of reddish tones and adds to these haptic surfaces with flower patterns that lie on the skin like tattoos. You get a very private view, unsealed and immediate, like a secret look in a strange bedroom. A moment when the artist succeeds in not only showing vulnerability in her works, but also strength and courage.

Text: Marina Sprenger