Australian-based Cherry Hood, winner of the 2002 Archibald Prize, paints oversize portraits in both oils and watercolour. Her dark and uncanny vision of adolescence is provocative and at times disturbing.
In 2000, Hood attained a Masters of Visual Art from the Sydney College of the Arts at the University of Sydney. In her thesis, she examined psychoanalytic and other theories relating to “the gaze” and to desire. The idea of longing, an important notion in contemporary art theory, has mostly been applied to the female body. Hood has theorized a different relationship: a three-way relationship between the subject and artist, the artist and the art work, and the art work and viewer.
Hood is best known for portraits of adolescent boys, which she places at the juxtaposition of this triangulated gaze.
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Bruder Eighteen, 2003, watercolour on Arches 640 gsm paper, 60 x 41 inches -
Lewis, 2003, watercolour on Arches 640 gsm paper, 60 x 41 inches -
Bruder Twenty four, 2003, watercolour on Arches 640 gsm paper, 60 x 41 inches
