Latest / The Russi Hive / Sarah Theresa Lee: The Inner Archive — Intimacy, Fantasy, and a “Process with No Process"

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Sarah Theresa Lee: The Inner Archive — Intimacy, Fantasy, and a “Process with No Process" · The Russi Hive

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: I'm Alejandra Russi and this is the Russi Hive, conversations with people who treat their work and life as a creative practice.
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: Today, we enter Sarah Theresa Lee's inner archive: Domestic interiors where the surreal tilts, desire hums, and masked toddlers haunt with a wink.
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: A psychiatric nurse by day she paints from a shifting cabinet of curiosities.
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: A song on the radio and the images rearrange.
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: Recombining, surfacing, insisting.
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: This podcast is presented by Ricco /Maresca.
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: Thank you for joining me, Sarah Lee.
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: And welcome to the Russi Hive Podcast.
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: I am so happy that we were able to make this happen during your very small window of time here in New York City.
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: I truly appreciate you taking the time to come in today.
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: You're welcome.
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: So um I will kick things off by reading a brief bio from this card.
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: You can consider it your introduction, but you get the final say.
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: So you can cut, add, completely rewrite it out loud if you like.
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: And then we can move on to our chat.
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: Sound good?
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: All right.
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: Sarah Theresa Lee, born 1980, is a self-taught Irish artist based in London, where she also works as a psychiatric nurse.
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: She began painting seriously during the global lockdown of 2020, and in just a few years, her work has gained wide recognition in Europe and the US.
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: In September of 2025, Ricco/Maresca Gallery presented her debut solo exhibition in New York titled "What Big Eyes You Have." Lee's paintings often unfold in domestic interiors, spaces charged with psychological tension and theatrical intimacy, populated by women, children, animals, and masked and disembodied figures.
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: Her scenes weave together innocence and menace, humor and horror into images that are impossible to ignore.
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: It sounds spot on.
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: Excellent.
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: Let's begin then.
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: From our conversations and from working together on your show, um, I know that you've always been an artist.
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: You've always had a vivid imagination ever since we were a child.
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: Uh but there was a long period where you stopped making art.
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: Uh and then during the lockdown of 2020, as I mentioned in your bio, you started again and you started painting seriously.
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: Do you have a sense of what sparked that shift, or does it still remain a little bit of a mystery to you?
• 2:42
  Speaker: I think it was accidental.
• 2:44
  Speaker: I think the painting and the wanting to create has always kind of just been there.
• 2:51
  Speaker: Like I have a small layer of everything else, and this was just sitting very heavily in the background, but never having the opportunity to, or maybe the confidence as well, to really go for it or allow anyone to really look at it or think about it in a way that would be I'm a painter or an artist.
• 3:14
  Speaker: I would never have referred to myself as an artist before.
• 3:18
  Speaker: I think it was, you know, I was working as a nurse during the lockdown, and like everybody else, we didn't we didn't go out after work.
• 3:27
  Speaker: I, you know, stayed at home.
• 3:28
  Speaker: Obviously, like the whole world stayed at home.
• 3:31
  Speaker: And I was at home with my daughter, who was probably a teenager at the time, maybe 14, 15.
• 3:38
  Speaker: And I guess we just find things to do.
• 3:41
  Speaker: Um, and my time was, you know, I just started drawing more.
• 3:46
  Speaker: I was always kind of I mean, I never completely stopped.
• 3:50
  Speaker: I've always been known to doodle wherever I go.
• 3:54
  Speaker: If I've been sitting at a kitchen table at someone's house, or if I'm at work, someone will say, Sarah's been here because this piece of magazine or envelope or paper is covered, just covered in little characters.
• 4:10
  Speaker: And I used to draw a lot just with a Byro.
• 4:13
  Speaker: Like I'd have pages of just Byro doodles that were just I guess now you could call them ideas, but at the time they just were that and didn't progress into anything else.
• 4:24
  Speaker: And then with the added amount of time we had, I think one day I had just at the lockdown, I opened an Instagram account through boredom and maybe wanting to connect with people.
• 4:36
  Speaker: Because many people did, I think many artists opened Instagram.
• 4:39
  Speaker: And lots of my like friends and family had Instagram.
• 4:42
  Speaker: They said, Oh, Sarah, you should open Instagram.
• 4:44
  Speaker: I think you'd like it because it's there's a lot of imagery which you're really into.
• 4:47
  Speaker: I was just like, it frightened me.
• 4:49
  Speaker: Instagram, the whole thing.
• 4:50
  Speaker: I was like, ah, that's the kind of world that I don't want to get caught up in.
• 4:53
  Speaker: But anyway, I opened the account, and one day I posted a drawing, and it was a very small drawing that I had done in pen, and I posted it just I'll just put it out there, and lots of people, like people I know, as well, oh wow, you're so talented.
• 5:11
  Speaker: I didn't know that you could do that, and this is really cool.
• 5:14
  Speaker: And I was like, Oh, I kind of felt happy about it.
• 5:18
  Speaker: And then I made very soon after that, I made another drawing, and I thought, okay, I'm gonna start adding colour to this.
• 5:26
  Speaker: So I got some, I think it was watercolor, I had a little watercolour set.
• 5:30
  Speaker: I drawn the picture and pen, and then I started to add colour to it, and it was of a girl sitting on a sofa.
• 5:38
  Speaker: I should show you actually at one point.
• 5:40
  Speaker: It's this size a girl sitting on a sofa, and she has bunny slippers on.
• 5:47
  Speaker: I think she has a small bottle of some vodka, maybe whiskey on the floor, and then there's a cat staring at her, and the cat saying, You really need to get over yourself.
• 5:58
  Speaker: And then I posted that one, and loads of people were like, That's so funny, that's me.
• 6:05
  Speaker: I'm totally that person.
• 6:06
  Speaker: You should make that into a t-shirt, you should make prints of that.
• 6:10
  Speaker: And I was like, Oh, thank you.
• 6:12
  Speaker: And then I just started doing it more and more, and I was like, Oh wow, there's actually people like this stuff.
• 6:19
  Speaker: And then, as you know, when you open an Instagram account, you start getting recommendations, and I start to see other artists that were like me, they kind of seemed to be just doing what they wanted.
• 6:33
  Speaker: There was no kind of I don't know, anything intellectual or you know, curated.
• 6:40
  Speaker: I was like, oh, these artists are really cool.
• 6:43
  Speaker: And before that, I I actually did have an interest in outsider art.
• 6:49
  Speaker: I I used to like look at, I went to a few exhibitions in London, but I didn't really like, I didn't follow the scene or anything.
• 6:57
  Speaker: And I think then as I progressively started to make more of these kind of I'd say naive style drawings, and I will say that that was unintentional.
• 7:09
  Speaker: I never set out to create work that was naive.
• 7:13
  Speaker: I was actually usually really trying to hard to make it look more sophisticated.
• 7:19
  Speaker: And the more I did, the more m my people looked like puppets, and um, and then other people from that, I guess, that have an interest in that work, like from America, started to follow me, and it just, you know, I just did it more and more and more, and here I am after quite a short space of time.
• 7:40
  Speaker: And it really opened up something that has always been there, but this kind of platform gave me the confidence because I could actually hide behind it, and it allowed me to network as well and speak to other people without, you know, just kind of behind my paintings.
• 8:01
  Speaker: And if people rejected me and didn't it, it's fine, it's just a GM.
• 8:05
  Speaker: You don't know them.
• 8:06
  Speaker: It's just a DM.
• 8:07
  Speaker: Exactly.
• 8:08
  Speaker: And um, and that happened, obviously.
• 8:11
  Speaker: I remember sending my work to like some kind of biggish galleries in London when they were doing open calls, and now I laugh because I think they would never have they must have been looking at my work and thinking, what the hell?
• 8:27
  Speaker: Obviously, I never heard back.
• 8:29
  Speaker: Um, but yeah, I found people that really responded to it and other artists that I've met like online that have really encouraged me.
• 8:40
  Speaker: And yeah, so that's the good side of Instagram.
• 8:44
  Speaker: That is the good side of Instagram.
• 8:46
  Speaker: I mean, I can moan about Instagram, and I think I everyone can, even as an artist, you can moan about it and say, Oh, it's this and it's that.
• 8:53
  Speaker: But honestly, without Instagram, I would not have met the people that I've met in the art world and the friends that I've made.
• 9:00
  Speaker: I wouldn't have met you, and yeah, that is it really is the good side of Instagram.
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: So kind of connected to something you mentioned, um, as a self-taught painter, do you think of that as your kind of secret weapon or has it ever felt like a hurdle?
• 9:17
  Speaker: Um I think yes, I think it's a secret weapon as well as a hurdle, but not so much.
• 9:27
  Speaker: A secret weapon in the sense that I don't think I have to get too caught up in detail um how a hand should look, how a body should look, um perspectives.
• 9:42
  Speaker: I've had some comments about that, and people commenting, oh, like your everything is so flat, you've got no dimension.
• 9:50
  Speaker: I didn't know that.
• 9:52
  Speaker: I didn't realise that.
• 9:54
  Speaker: I just I don't have an eye for I mean now I I can see that other people's artwork is very dimensional and you know there's all different techniques which I love as well, but I only learnt that I was doing that by listening to other people telling me that I was doing that.
• 10:11
  Speaker: So being self-taught, I think there is a freedom and having people like that kind of work.
• 10:16
  Speaker: It means that I can have an idea, I can, you know, maybe get a reference for a body, or I'd take a photo of myself, and I don't spend a long time.
• 10:26
  Speaker: What's the size of this?
• 10:29
  Speaker: And is this oh, she could never possibly move her arm like that, or this reflection that it wouldn't totally look like that.
• 10:37
  Speaker: I don't worry about that.
• 10:39
  Speaker: And I kind of beside the point.
• 10:41
  Speaker: I think it creates um charm, and I like that in other people's work.
• 10:46
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 10:46
  Speaker: Um, and I I like I've always liked that in other people's work, but I haven't known why I was so attracted to that work, but I know that there was something in it that was just so removed from everything else, and it caught my eye.
• 10:59
  Speaker: And yeah, I like being self-taught.
• 11:02
  Speaker: I've had moments where I thought I've been a bit self-conscious, and I thought, oh, I need to learn how to do this better, or I need to learn how to paint bodies better, or hands, and even then when I try and do that, something doesn't it just like it's like I I don't enjoy it.
• 11:23
  Speaker: Um I get bored and I like to produce things reasonably quickly so I can move on to the other little slide in my head.
• 11:32
  Speaker: Um that's just the way I paint.
• 11:34
  Speaker: I don't think it will ever be any way different.
• 11:37
  Speaker: Um, and I think if I tried if I was doing any other way, I'd it would lose so much.
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: I agree.
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I agree.
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: So you've been a psychiatric nurse for how many years now?
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: Just under a decade.
• 11:50
  Speaker: Oh, a long time.
• 11:51
  Speaker: So um I qualified in 2017.
• 11:56
  Speaker: I went to university to do my nursing degree in my mid-30s.
• 12:02
  Speaker: So yeah, that was four years.
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: So and what motivated you to go into that field and also what does it entail?
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: I'm really curious what your job is like.
• 12:12
  Speaker: So many motivations.
• 12:14
  Speaker: It does come from a really, really personal place.
• 12:16
  Speaker: I learned a lot about mental health, serious mental health conditions from a young age.
• 12:21
  Speaker: From my mum's side of the family, um, there's a high prevalence of schizophrenia.
• 12:27
  Speaker: So I grew up, she she came all her family came from Ireland, and they were living in London like her sisters, and we spent a lot of time visiting them and them coming to our home.
• 12:41
  Speaker: Um and when I was growing up, it was really strange for me, and it was also kind of hard because it was something that I didn't understand, and also in the 80s as well, having a serious mental illness like schizophrenia was very I mean, it still is now stigmatizing, but it was even so more taboo that you couldn't talk about it, and it was kind of like, uh what's wrong with her?
• 13:08
  Speaker: She's you know, and as a little girl, there was a bit of shame there, I suppose, as well.
• 13:14
  Speaker: Um, because I'd be worried about being judged, and you know, um, but also there was a lack of understanding at the time of what was going on for people that had serious and mental health services were not like they are now.
• 13:31
  Speaker: Um so since then I'd always developed an interest in why some people develop like an illness like schizophrenia, what happens genetically, what happens in a person's history.
• 13:48
  Speaker: I fantasized about becoming a psychiatrist, actually.
• 13:52
  Speaker: And I knew that my family and my mother would absolutely hate that because I always remember her on the phones to doctors and shouting and being really unhappy.
• 14:02
  Speaker: And I yeah, I just remember thinking, oh my mum would hate it if I was like did anything like that.
• 14:08
  Speaker: Because it was kind of like it was so in mental health services, it was very much us and them, and they were kind of like very much directing people and medicating people.
• 14:21
  Speaker: It was kind of like an evil almost like the mental health services, they weren't as soft and they didn't have the I don't know the resources or the knowledge to really care for people.
• 14:33
  Speaker: I worked in lots of um community kind of mental health settings in my 20s, and I did that for many, many years whilst raising Sadie, my daughter.
• 14:44
  Speaker: Um and then I thought, okay, I can take this further, and I I'm good at it.
• 14:49
  Speaker: I'm really I really enjoyed working with people and finding out about them and trying to support them.
• 14:56
  Speaker: And I realized that for some people, having somebody that was kind of non-judgmental and could I understand and not look at them like they're freaks or something, which quite often happens.
• 15:08
  Speaker: Um I was like, I think that I have this is, you know, this is my calling a little bit like a vocation that I should go and pursue this a bit more.
• 15:18
  Speaker: And actually originally I went to do a social work degree, and then I changed it in the first year to mental health nursing.
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: I think when you're dealing with uh psychosis from the other side, like the side of the quote, sane person, yeah, you realize how flimsy the boundaries are really between like our shared view of reality and the worlds that each of us really carry inside of us.
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: It's just that these people have like more intense inner worlds that kind of overflow to the other side.
• 15:58
  Speaker: It is an overflow, yeah.
• 16:00
  Speaker: And my understanding is as well of myself that I've had times where I'm like, okay, I feel like there are points where maybe that I'm gonna I could potentially overflow and I'm not any different.
• 16:14
  Speaker: There could be something that pushes me to that to overflow, and a lot of people um I don't know why, I just seem to I seem to kind of have like a natural understanding of people like you know, and lots of people hear voices anyway, um, or presence, or they have, you know, even me as a young child, I kind of feel like there's always kind of another presence or something around, and that's okay.
• 16:50
  Speaker: And I think a lot of people can feel that, but it's I guess when it kind of overflows into something bad, or then it becomes, you know, it's a mental illness, or yeah.
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: So you've said that you don't really see your nursing influencing your art, although I think a lot of people would love to make that connection.
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: They do all the time.
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: So I'm just curious how the two coexist kind of side by side in your life.
• 17:19
  Speaker: I don't think it's strange that people think that I'm heavily influenced from my job.
• 17:23
  Speaker: It's actually it's my life, like what I've told you, like the um exposure to people in my family that had had serious mental health issues.
• 17:34
  Speaker: I've had my own lived experience of mental health issues, and um everything that I've created is like my kind of world.
• 17:46
  Speaker: It's it really is nobody else's.
• 17:49
  Speaker: It's it's so personal to me.
• 17:52
  Speaker: Um, but I can understand that.
• 17:55
  Speaker: Oh, I bet you met a person.
• 17:56
  Speaker: I always get it.
• 17:57
  Speaker: Like I got it the other night.
• 17:58
  Speaker: I bet you met a person that was like this, or oh, I can understand why you've gone and painted this woman and the the face in the mirror, and you know, I was actually, yeah, I mean, these are all kind of my thoughts on experiences.
• 18:14
  Speaker: Um yeah, I mean that makes sense.
• 18:19
  Speaker: Yeah, and it is, and when you do a job like that, you really do have to escape into your own world if you can.
• 18:26
  Speaker: Otherwise, you have to have something.
• 18:29
  Speaker: Um yeah.
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: Do your patients know about your other life as an artist?
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: Um, yes, they do.
• 18:38
  Speaker: Yeah, I've spoken to lots of patients.
• 18:40
  Speaker: I don't think I could be a nurse, or I certainly don't select roles as a nurse where I have to be really blank.
• 18:48
  Speaker: Um, because I'm not a blank person, and I think that would be very draining.
• 18:54
  Speaker: Yes.
• 18:54
  Speaker: Um but you know, I pick and choose, I you know, when it's appropriate to tell people that I have that.
• 19:01
  Speaker: And to relate to people, I think you have to be able to show a bit of yourself.
• 19:07
  Speaker: Do you have any creative routines or rituals?
• 19:10
  Speaker: Um creative routines.
• 19:14
  Speaker: Like I will wake up as soon as the sun rises and I will get some painting done sometimes before I went to work, and then when I got back from work.
• 19:23
  Speaker: Um it can be really I can sit thinking about like starting something for a couple of days, and I'm kind of like picturing it in my head, but I don't I think some other artists in that process they might sit around doing sketches where they my sketches just exist in my head.
• 19:45
  Speaker: It's like uh okay, it's pieced together and now it's ready to come out, and then I will start the painting and it will all come together really quickly.
• 19:55
  Speaker: Um but I don't think I'm I don't think there's any rituals as such.
• 20:01
  Speaker: I mean I listen to music, I listen to the radio a lot.
• 20:05
  Speaker: Um and you work um at your kitchen table.
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: Most of the time, yeah.
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: Would you ever want a a studio that's separate from your home?
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: To travel to?
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: Just a place where you go to paint.
• 20:20
  Speaker: Um, not like if I was to do a residency, that would be cool.
• 20:24
  Speaker: But the fact that I can paint at home means that I can just be there.
• 20:29
  Speaker: I can start and I can finish and I can walk past it and I'll have an idea and I'll add it.
• 20:36
  Speaker: Um that's just the way I paint.
• 20:39
  Speaker: It's it's such a kind of it's it's a process that has no process.
• 20:44
  Speaker: Yeah, I feel like.
• 20:45
  Speaker: And it's kind of incorporated into your life.
• 20:47
  Speaker: It's incorporated.
• 20:48
  Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
• 20:49
  Speaker: I can start a painting and then I'll be listening to a song on a radio, and I'll be like, oh, and it will influence like a tiny part of it or a whole feel.
• 20:59
  Speaker: Like maybe the song's in the 80s or the 70s, and then suddenly the painting's background will become more of that kind of like oh that's so interesting.
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I love that.
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: So kind of related to that, you've described of uh having a cabinet of curiosities in your head full of characters and scenes that you can pull out whenever you want.
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: Do you think you draw more from that inner archive or from the world immediately around you?
• 21:28
  Speaker: It's a mixture, it really is a mixture.
• 21:31
  Speaker: I think the inner archive is bigger, and sometimes both the worlds can collide.
• 21:37
  Speaker: The inner archive meets the outside world, if you know what I mean.
• 21:41
  Speaker: Yes.
• 21:41
  Speaker: And then sometimes that's how I guess the the image is formed.
• 21:45
  Speaker: Um definitely.
• 21:49
  Speaker: I mean, yeah, I uh some things that I've painted has been as a like I may have had a funny conversation with someone, and it's made me think of a painting, and it's already Forming in my head whilst I'm and then it gets stored and it might come out a few months later, it might come out that day.
• 22:06
  Speaker: Um but it doesn't get lost.
• 22:08
  Speaker: It doesn't never nothing ever gets lost.
• 22:12
  Speaker: No.
• 22:13
  Speaker: There's still but sometimes the cabinet might rearrange itself, like there'll be like a priority shelf.
• 22:20
  Speaker: Things will move forward, move backwards, things will go to the middle, and then come to the front again.
• 22:26
  Speaker: And I'll never start a painting and then start another one without finishing that painting.
• 22:32
  Speaker: It's almost like I cannot do that.
• 22:34
  Speaker: Yeah, I understand.
• 22:35
  Speaker: Like I have to get this done now.
• 22:37
  Speaker: And then move on to the next.
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: And then move on.
• 22:40
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: So in your work, there's so much pleasure in the details.
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: Um the shoes, the nightgowns, the tiles, the wallpaper.
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: It's those wonderful textures all around.
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: Um are these things pulled from your own memories, or do they just kind of happen in the moment?
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: They're pulled from my memories.
• 23:03
  Speaker: Um and they can happen in the moment.
• 23:06
  Speaker: Like if I'm let me try and think.
• 23:10
  Speaker: Because everything kind of refers to kind of nostalgia.
• 23:16
  Speaker: I I as a kid, I probably mentioned before, I was absolutely obsessed with horror films.
• 23:21
  Speaker: We'll get to that.
• 23:22
  Speaker: We'll get okay, good.
• 23:23
  Speaker: Like I don't I don't want to use the word tacky, but there's a certain like no one in these paintings uh have very much money, but I think some of the characters would like to present themselves as oh, you know, a little bit more fancy than they are.
• 23:46
  Speaker: In particular, that one over there, I don't know if you've noticed, but she's got a bottle of perfume.
• 23:53
  Speaker: Yes.
• 23:54
  Speaker: You may just be able to work out that it's like I think it was a brand from it was really popular in the 80s.
• 24:02
  Speaker: I think it was like Anna.
• 24:04
  Speaker: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 24:05
  Speaker: I remember that.
• 24:06
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 24:07
  Speaker: That's I always used to see that in the bathroom in my house.
• 24:12
  Speaker: Uh-huh.
• 24:12
  Speaker: Um so that just kind of popped out into that painting.
• 24:15
  Speaker: Yeah, it didn't my m my I think it was my mum's paint like perfume.
• 24:20
  Speaker: Oh, but to my mum, it was like really fancy.
• 24:23
  Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
• 24:23
  Speaker: Yeah, so it's always stuck out in my head.
• 24:26
  Speaker: And then like maybe the bottles, usually the shampoos and stuff, they're from my like what I remember from childhood, and just like in the bathroom, those are bottles of just stuff.
• 24:40
  Speaker: I think they are significant, and I think they say a lot about the person in the painting.
• 24:46
  Speaker: Yes, if that makes sense.
• 24:48
  Speaker: It does, yeah.
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: So, apart from like all the richness of the textures, and obviously the the palettes are so saturated, there are also many moments of nudity and kind of stripped down bodies.
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: How do you think about the balance between ornament and exposure?
• 25:08
  Speaker: Wow, I don't know.
• 25:10
  Speaker: I mean, I get asked about this all the time.
• 25:14
  Speaker: I can't articulate it that well.
• 25:17
  Speaker: There are so many layers of, and what I will say for sure, I never set out to make sexual images.
• 25:26
  Speaker: To me, they're not.
• 25:28
  Speaker: I'm I heard a few people the other night saying these are very sexually charged paintings.
• 25:34
  Speaker: Um I mean, everything is sexually charged anyway.
• 25:38
  Speaker: I think there's a lot of there's a lot of power, there's a lot of a space between vulnerability as a woman, as a girl, in between those two worlds as well.
• 25:50
  Speaker: Expectations.
• 25:52
  Speaker: Um there's so many layers to it.
• 25:55
  Speaker: There's so many, there's a lot of personal stuff, and maybe how I felt uh at times in my life, um, maybe not quite in control.
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: So many of your paintings are set in bedrooms, living rooms, kitchens, kitchens, yes, kitchens, yes, bathrooms, um, everyday home interiors.
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: Uh, but they always feel uncanny to me at least.
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: What do you think keeps you coming back to those spaces?
• 26:27
  Speaker: I was thinking about this the other day.
• 26:29
  Speaker: I mean, it could be simply I do I spend a lot of time alone.
• 26:37
  Speaker: Um when I'm imagining some characters, they are women that are alone in their space, and what happens to somebody when they're at home alone?
• 26:52
  Speaker: And how do you feel when you know no one's watching you and you're just left with your thoughts and yourself?
• 26:59
  Speaker: And are you doing yourself up and walking around the house looking glamorous?
• 27:05
  Speaker: Are you looking, you know, when we're at home alone, and I mean, you know, home alone, maybe you've just got your cat or dog there.
• 27:12
  Speaker: What are you wearing?
• 27:13
  Speaker: Are you just sitting there naked?
• 27:15
  Speaker: Are you just in your panties, or are you fantasizing about life?
• 27:22
  Speaker: Are you fantasizing about how life can be, or yeah, what does a woman do in that space when she's feeling many different emotions and when nobody else is looking?
• 27:37
  Speaker: I think that's what it comes from.
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so it's more it's the space kind of mirroring the internal world of someone who's alone.
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: Because I so I was thinking about it in a very different way, I guess.
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: Um, in my own dreams, I often come back to my childhood bedroom.
• 27:56
  Speaker 2: Uh-huh.
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: And I wonder if that's like my brain's way of telling me that there's maybe unfinished business there.
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: Uh so I was maybe thinking, oh, well, you keep coming back to these spaces.
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: Maybe there's a something there that you're working through that you don't even know it's possible.
• 28:16
  Speaker: That actually happens to me as well.
• 28:18
  Speaker: I always return to a house that I used to live in, but this is probably in my early twenties.
• 28:28
  Speaker: I keep returning there, and then I'm caught between two houses.
• 28:32
  Speaker: One and they're two very different.
• 28:35
  Speaker: One is not so nice and it's dark, but I'm there and I know that I should be in this other house.
• 28:41
  Speaker: Um, but I do keep returning there, and it is really significant when you have dreams like that where you return to spaces.
• 28:48
  Speaker: I mean, I don't link it to dreams, but um it's it's a question to be thought about all the time, really.
• 28:58
  Speaker: I don't really have a full answer.
• 29:01
  Speaker: I think that I also spend a lot of time just it's a create a creation of a character as well.
• 29:10
  Speaker: It's you know, who is she, what does she do?
• 29:14
  Speaker: There's a lot of the more time you spend alone, the more fantasy that you can create, I guess.
• 29:22
  Speaker: Whether that's a good or bad thing.
• 29:24
  Speaker: Um sometimes people continually just live in a little fantasy world that never kind of and as soon as they step out of the house, there's something else going on.
• 29:37
  Speaker: So yeah, there's a mixture of things going on there, I think.
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: So I was not surprised to learn that you are a horror cinema fan.
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: And I am too.
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: Oh, wonderful.
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: Um and as we both know, some of the most effective horror happens in domestic spaces where it's least expected.
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: The home, where you are supposed to feel safe, where everything's supposed to be familiar, and when that flips and turns threatening, it just kind of hits even harder.
• 30:07
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: When you're painting, are you thinking about fear at all?
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: Whether it's your own or the viewers?
• 30:15
  Speaker: My paintings are never set out to make other people feel fear, but I definitely think within the characters there's some elements of fear or a lot of time overcoming it.
• 30:28
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: So in a recent interview, you mentioned two of my favorite films.
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: The Shining and Rosemary's Baby.
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: Oh wow.
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: And The Shining is a masterpiece.
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: And we could do a whole episode about The Shining.
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: Uh, so I'll just leave it at that.
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: But Rosemary's Baby um feels especially close to your work.
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: And I'll tell you why I think it's the dream home turned into a nightmare.
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: It's the husband's betrayal.
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: Uh-huh.
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: Um, it's the absolute horror of having something growing inside of you that's dark and that you never chose.
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: Um, the whole plot reflects everything that like second wave feminism was fighting against when that film was made, the late 60s, I think.
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: Um and then the twist at the end is like the best part because she decides to love the baby anyway.
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: And that's really dark.
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: Um, I think it's brilliant, it's disturbing, all these things, and it captures the impossible positions that women are often put in.
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: Um and it just kind of feels connected to many of your paintings.
• 31:49
  Speaker: I agree, yeah.
• 31:51
  Speaker: Um, I watched that film purely by accident, again, as a very young child, and I wouldn't have been able to understand even the concepts.
• 32:00
  Speaker: I mean, I was probably watching stuff that I shouldn't have been.
• 32:04
  Speaker: Um but I was really taken with that film.
• 32:10
  Speaker: I was obsessed.
• 32:11
  Speaker: Um, but yeah, no, I I do agree with you about the perfect home, the the marriage, and it's a completely it's it's so relevant still today um what you're watching in that film.
• 32:28
  Speaker: It's horrific, the abuse um of yeah.
• 32:32
  Speaker: Yeah, but I yeah, I do feel that I I've not consciously done that, but I do feel that these are similar kind of feelings for sure.
• 32:44
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: And at the same time, you seem to subvert that in some ways because at first glance, um your women might look like they're in danger.
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: But then you kind of realize that they're in control.
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's really important, isn't it?
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: And then there's like the male figures, but it's never like a full man, right?
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: It's like uh like a surrogate or a a wolf or a kind of hairy devil.
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: Uh they're always kind of absurd and inadequate, you know.
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: There's a real contrast there.
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: So, you know, is that maybe your way of claiming back power?
• 33:30
  Speaker: I think so.
• 33:31
  Speaker: I I remember a guy saying to me, I think it was at the outsider art fair, he's like, look at all your work, all the women look really threatened.
• 33:38
  Speaker: I was like, oh well, I guess you know, you're seeing something that is not really the case.
• 33:45
  Speaker: It's kind of more like maybe a past of being threatened and the present of overcoming something.
• 33:54
  Speaker: Um, I think that's more what what's going on.
• 33:58
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 33:58
  Speaker: Um, like this could happen, but actually this isn't actually gonna happen.
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: But it's also that that moment when it might happen or it might not happen.
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: You don't know.
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: It's like suspend it.
• 34:09
  Speaker: Or I've spin I've just spinned it on its head completely when that per when that figure wasn't expecting it.
• 34:18
  Speaker: Like the wolf that comes into the house over here.
• 34:22
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 34:23
  Speaker: Right behind you, I think.
• 34:25
  Speaker: This one.
• 34:26
  Speaker: And then she pours him a cup of tea.
• 34:28
  Speaker: I mean, if you take a close look at that picture, it's the details you say he's got something on his mind, but she poured him a cup of tea.
• 34:36
  Speaker: Yeah, she was like, okay.
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: You also paint a lot of kids.
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: Um you call them monster kids, um, and they're always wearing kind of Halloween masks.
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: What do you think keeps you coming back to these characters with with masks?
• 34:54
  Speaker: Um so they directly relate to childhood um and fancy dress parties with the plastic masks like the Ben Cooper star masks, and you know, running around the house with party dresses on and these funny masks.
• 35:14
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 35:14
  Speaker: It's kind of a fun, it's a weird concept in itself.
• 35:18
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 35:18
  Speaker: And then put that kind of in the 80s and kids going crazy on, I don't know, Kaiser or whatever you have, you know.
• 35:27
  Speaker: Were you big on Halloween when you were growing up?
• 35:30
  Speaker: Yeah, but not not like overly.
• 35:34
  Speaker: I every day was like Halloween to me.
• 35:37
  Speaker: Do you know what I mean?
• 35:38
  Speaker: So it wasn't like, and in the UK we like Halloween, but it's not like here.
• 35:42
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 35:43
  Speaker: Where it's massive.
• 35:44
  Speaker: But um I was there was no start and finish when when it came to monsters for me.
• 35:51
  Speaker: And I think you have that's a really good line.
• 35:54
  Speaker: I had um lots of very strange memories, conscious memories of me as a child.
• 36:01
  Speaker: This is gonna sound really strange.
• 36:03
  Speaker: My family all watching TV in one room, and me standing in the dark in the hallway at the end of the staircase, and I used to vision all these little faces floating down the hall, and they were all different masks, like ghoulish masks.
• 36:21
  Speaker: I'd imagine like all sorts of things.
• 36:23
  Speaker: I imagined like there was a little house on my head, and there was people coming down the front of my like my whole world was just like very alive in imagery.
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: You're also quite fond of separating heads from bodies.
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: Um, have you given any rational thought to that?
• 36:40
  Speaker: But I think that's kind of a psychological image of how I'm just like feel sometimes.
• 36:46
  Speaker: I feel like I not dissociate, but sometimes I do.
• 36:53
  Speaker: And I just feel like, or I've had people in the past say, come on, Sarah, integrate.
• 36:59
  Speaker: And it's like, I sometimes I do feel a little bit like I'm leaving my body and I'm here and I need to be here, and it takes sometimes I have to really drag myself back a lot, you know, more maybe than what average people have to do.
• 37:18
  Speaker: And you have to put many different faces on to live in the world and to exist and to communicate with different people, and to sometimes just being yourself is not acceptable.
• 37:32
  Speaker: I mean, now at my age, I completely accept myself as I am, but growing up, I was always the child that was never what's wrong with her?
• 37:42
  Speaker: Like, why isn't she doing this?
• 37:45
  Speaker: Or why hasn't she got like lots of friends at school?
• 37:49
  Speaker: And even amongst my peers, I was always an odd child.
• 37:54
  Speaker: Um, and it really affected me because I was never trying to be odd, right?
• 37:59
  Speaker: But I didn't know how to try to not be either.
• 38:03
  Speaker: And thankfully for me, I didn't get to the point where I thought, God, I really have to change if I'm gonna be liked and if I'm gonna make more friends.
• 38:11
  Speaker: Um, I just I think I just became more and more within myself, and I still experience that.
• 38:18
  Speaker: And so the heads is like, oh, you know, come on, so what do I need today?
• 38:23
  Speaker: Yeah, what do I need today?
• 38:24
  Speaker: So yeah, it's it's nothing got to do with um violence or anything like that.
• 38:31
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: So when people call your work surreal, apart from the obvious, I think they are picking up on the fact that the works kind of resist interpretation, in my opinion.
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: Like you don't tie everything up neatly, you leave that tension hanging, kind of the decisive moment almost.
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: Do you see that ambiguity as central to your work?
• 38:58
  Speaker: I think that it should be that way.
• 39:00
  Speaker: I would hate to have to walk around every painting in here and say, well, this is what it means, this is what it represents, I'm talking about women in this way, or um, you know, I'm not out there to create feminist work.
• 39:16
  Speaker: I am a feminist, but I'm not, it's it's too personal to, but I see other people can relate, and they'll be like, some people will really get it, and they'll be like, oh, I get this, I understand this, but um, it doesn't bother me either way if there's people out there that don't, or they are unsettled and they think, I don't really understand, I need to understand, I'm not really or they have a completely different interpretation.
• 39:46
  Speaker: Oh my god, so many people have different interpretations, and um and I think that you have to allow for that, really.
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, once you create something, it's out there, it's the world, it's separate from you.
• 40:02
  Speaker: And if it resonates with people in a really positive way, then that's a great thing.
• 40:07
  Speaker: If it stirs people in a negative way, maybe it's something for them to think about about it.
• 40:13
  Speaker: Maybe that's okay too.
• 40:14
  Speaker: Yeah, I think I think it definitely is okay, awful comments.
• 40:18
  Speaker: And I like standing around and hearing people say, This is horrible, this is terrible, and why is she doing that?
• 40:24
  Speaker: It's so violent.
• 40:25
  Speaker: Oh, she hates men, or that's not what's going on, but yeah, you know, it's it's up for interpretation.
• 40:34
  Speaker: Go for it, have fun.
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: So the titles of your paintings are usually either descriptive in a very matter-of-fact way, like monster baby with her kitten, for example, or they're ironic, like how to write a love story.
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and then some are just look kind of straight up funny, which is like one of my personal favorites.
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: Um, you are very tacky and everyone hates you.
• 40:58
  Speaker: That actually comes from a line from a film.
• 41:01
  Speaker: Oh, really?
• 41:02
  Speaker: From the 80s, and a kid, I don't even know what the film is, but it always stuck out in my head.
• 41:08
  Speaker: This kid said it to an adult.
• 41:10
  Speaker: It's not like a major part of the film.
• 41:12
  Speaker: A kid just said it to an adult.
• 41:13
  Speaker: You're very tacky and everyone hates you.
• 41:15
  Speaker: I was just like, that is the best line.
• 41:17
  Speaker: It really is.
• 41:18
  Speaker: And when I I didn't go with that line when I painted the picture, but when I had finished it, she's I thought that is a great title.
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: And it's it's something a kid would say.
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they but it's also in the context of that painting, it's something she is saying to herself.
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: I think.
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, she is, exactly, which is really, really interesting.
• 41:41
  Speaker: Yeah, she's not had a good time that week.
• 41:43
  Speaker: She's just like it's about it's been a bad week.
• 41:45
  Speaker: Yeah, you're shit, everyone hates you.
• 41:49
  Speaker: Just fucking look at the face of you, and then you go out for the day and look great and smile.
• 41:56
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 41:57
  Speaker: Whereas actually, I wouldn't do that.
• 41:58
  Speaker: I would just leave the house and everyone could tell how I was feeling.
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: So I feel like to get the titles together with the images, they feel almost like a wink to the viewer that says, This is dark, but that it's also playful.
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 42:14
  Speaker: Um, is humor an active ingredient in your work?
• 42:17
  Speaker: I think humor is an active ingredient in my life in general.
• 42:21
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 42:21
  Speaker: I think that makes my job a lot easier.
• 42:25
  Speaker: And I remember when I was training, they were like, working in mental health is it's traumatizing, it's heavy stuff.
• 42:33
  Speaker: If you don't have a sense of humor, you're gonna really suffer.
• 42:36
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 42:36
  Speaker: And I just think in life, life is hard, it's traumatic, terrible things happen, good things happen.
• 42:43
  Speaker: Even in my darkest times, I've always maintained a sense of humor.
• 42:49
  Speaker: And I think it's my safety grace.
• 42:51
  Speaker: I think you know, and I think it's so important.
• 42:55
  Speaker: Laughing.
• 42:56
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 42:57
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 42:58
  Speaker: So important.
• 42:58
  Speaker: It's so important.
• 43:00
  Speaker: And laughing in the depths of sadness and when bad things are happening, if you can still find stuff to laugh at and have friends that can laugh with you, you're lucky, really lucky.
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: So you were born in 1980.
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: Um, which technically puts you right on the cusp between Gen X and millennials.
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: Uh, do you feel more Gen X or more millennial or a mix of both?
• 43:26
  Speaker: I think a mixture, and reason being because I was the youngest of four girls, and I was really influenced by them.
• 43:33
  Speaker: Like I have twins in my family, and they're eight years older, and then my middle sister Julie, who you met the other night, she's four years older.
• 43:41
  Speaker: So even though I was born in 1980, like in January, I think there was such uh influence from pre like music, and I was really lucky that I had them because they they all had like really great taste in music and cool stuff, and because the I had them like my life growing up.
• 44:03
  Speaker: I had all these inspirations, and you know.
• 44:06
  Speaker: Yeah, I I think it's a mixture.
• 44:10
  Speaker: A mixture.
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I was talking to somebody the other day about being.
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: I'm like I'm a millennial, like a proper millennial, I guess.
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: And we were talking about how lucky we are that we grew up in a kind of mostly analog world.
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: And then kind of seamlessly transitioned to the digital world.
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: But we have that memory of like things that are disappearing completely.
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure.
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: And it's it's like such a privilege.
• 44:39
  Speaker: Yeah, I agree.
• 44:40
  Speaker: I agree.
• 44:41
  Speaker: Like you see things now that speaking to like sometimes I get really caught out just speaking to someone that's 20, 25 about something, and they'll just be like looking at me as like, that's really old-fashioned.
• 44:52
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 44:53
  Speaker: I'd be like, really?
• 44:54
  Speaker: Okay.
• 44:55
  Speaker: Um, I love that.
• 44:57
  Speaker: I yeah, I love that.
• 44:59
  Speaker: And I think my work as well is always gonna retain it.
• 45:02
  Speaker: There's nothing ever gonna be like modern and yeah about it.
• 45:08
  Speaker: I like that it's I feel that it's still stuck in the past.
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: So finally, um, Plaster magazine has this series where they ask artists to imagine their fantasy perfect day.
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: And I thought it was such a fun idea, so I'm borrowing it for your interview.
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: So if you could design your own perfect fantasy day beginning to end, what would it be?
• 45:32
  Speaker 2: I mean, I love I love having a space and peace of mind.
• 45:39
  Speaker 2: I don't really ask for much more other than peace in my mind.
• 45:45
  Speaker 2: I mean, distressing times can create a painting.
• 45:48
  Speaker 2: Um, I've made some paintings whilst like being really distressed, but I don't want to feel that way and don't enjoy it.
• 45:56
  Speaker 2: I don't, but I I still can create during those times.
• 46:01
  Speaker 2: It it won't stop me.
• 46:03
  Speaker 2: Um, but when you say to ask for a perfect day, I mean I could say, oh, I'd love to do this and I'd love to do that, but actually I just want peace in my mind and contentment, and that would make a perfect day.
• 46:16
  Speaker 2: Maybe that sounds really basic, but it's difficult.
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: It's actually hard to accomplish.
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: Well, this was so much fun.
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much for joining me.
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: Thank you.
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: And yeah, we'll see what where this all goes.
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, wonderful.
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: Thank you.
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: If this conversation resonated with you, follow the show wherever you listen and find me on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and Substack @RussiHive.
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: If someone came to mind for the Hive, send guest suggestions to guests@russihive.com.
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: And if you just want to say hi, it's hello@ russihive.com.
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: Original music and sonic identity for the Russi Hive by Ant food.
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: Until next time, let your life be a creative act.