Real Leather (Old Bags series), 2026
Vitreous glass painting, leather handbags, found objects (glasses, tablets, keys, keyring, shopping list, moisturiser tube, pencil), bespoke light sheets.
Real Leather (Old Bags series) reclaims that casual insult used to diminish older women. Each handbag holds a painted glass portrait of an older woman who displays in various ways their displeasure at this insult. Handbags are sometimes used as a sort of symbolic object used to caricature or trivialise older women. The project takes that symbolism and the insult ‘old bag’ and throws it back at the viewer to confront the casual cruelty of the stereotype.
The images are glass paintings – painted using traditional glass painting techniques and then set into handbags and lit internally with bespoke light sheets.
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Many thanks go to my fabulous friends @drdawnpereira and @suepilborough for allowing me to paint them for this project.
