Hattie Quigley
Fine Art BA Hons
Edinburgh College of Art
Specialisms: Fine Art / Painting /
Location: Edinburgh, United Kingdom
Hattie Quigley
First Name: Hattie
Last Name: Quigley
Specialisms: Fine Art / Painting
Sectors:
My Location: Edinburgh, United Kingdom
University / College: Edinburgh College of Art
Course / Program Title: Fine Art BA Hons
About
My current practice consists of large-scale paintings that act as containers for emotion —feminine desire, hunger, grief, euphoria — too unruly to speak plainly. Figures emerge and dissolve within turbulent scenes of intimacy and excess, their bodies caught between celebration and collapse. These are places where pleasure is not tamed, where women and other bodies push against the narrow confines of acceptability, claiming the right to feel, want, gorge, and live without apology.
I explore what it means to be a hungry woman in contemporary society - how feminine desire is shaped: the ways it is marketed, policed, commodified, yet still erupts in forms that resist containment. I am drawn to the tension between control and abandon, between the moment of holding back and the moment of giving in. Paint itself becomes food, flesh, light, atmosphere — a sensuous, volatile substance that records touch and pressure. Food is a common thread through which I explore wider themes of erotic desire, power, obsession, capitalism, and consumerism — all dancing around what painting is in its very essence.
Exploring the relationship between femininity, food and female desire, my work poses the question of what it means to be a hungry woman in contemporary society. Revelling in the deliciousness of being ‘too much’, they explore gluttony, excess and indulgence. It is political to talk about women who are unashamedly insatiable. I immerse the viewer in the visceral pleasure of my painted world; one where women gorge and feast, lose inhibition, and reject the notion that physical attractiveness should be a baseline before you can start to live. The buttery, deliciousness of paint, flesh and food are bound together in emotional, pulsing marks that dance around the histories and language of painting.
Competitions
