Ashley Cullen’s paintings engage with raw emotional states usually attributed to women to expose the risks (and pleasures) of being vulnerable and abandoning facades of composure and control.
Portraiture by Ashley Cullen
Category: Creative
Blue Champagne
You roll in
And pull parts of my sanity away with you.
Like sun speckled blue champagne,
I drink you
Up.
Sugar
Sugar by Faith Stellmaker critiques the experiences and social expectations of women in the contemporary moment and explores the ways in which girls present themselves. With feminism recently coming to the foreground of political and cultural debates, these images capture the unapologetic camaraderie shared between females in both the public and private space. They aim to ‘turn the tide’ against labels, stereotypes and the negative connotations that come with ageing by celebrating women and highlighting the female form.
The Graiai and Medusa
They call us grey and haggard; unworthy of their society. But, did we ask to be born this way? No. It seems our rejected fate was chosen for us.
Payoff
She’s been cast aside for a Daniel, a Darren, or a David and she listens silently as the panel tells her how close she was before eventually deciding she was ‘too good’ where they had her. They will be looking again in 6 months, but she can’t give six more months. All she can think about is her fifteen minutes, the only reason she works so hard. She imagines what could give her life meaning without it, if she wasn’t measured in accolades and transient successes.
Sapphic Silencing
My sexuality is not a university research paper, requiring citations in Chicago Style format
Spotlight on Joy Davidman
To express the thoughts, emotions and cognitions we feel no other soul has ever known; to be able to capture a feeling in tangible language, place it before someone and have them say ‘that’s mine’, is a form of emotional empowerment few strangers can offer each other.
The Reframing of Sex
“Every time a man cums in me / He leaves a part of his soul.”
Lover
“To know one such as I know you / To love in knowing, as I love / The passages of your soul …”
Reasonable Adjustments
“I read the latest reply in the email thread with my lecturer, close my eyes, and feel my heart sink and chest tighten as I prepare for the all too familiar battle ahead. My faith in the system has been jaded by years of veiled requests to prove the legitimacy and severity of my illness over and over again. EAP be damned.”