Grace Weaver: Mothers

In her paintings and drawings, Grace Weaver (b. 1989) explores the possibilities of the human form. In recent works, the artist turns to archetypal motifs, including the mother and child, and the female nude. For Weaver, the body is not just a subject but a site – a stage on which line is choreographed in lyrical gestures, and through which emotion comes to the fore. Her compositions are made with a consciousness for the procedure of painting itself: whether in watercolour, oil or acrylic, she develops a unique choreography of chroma and brushwork, resulting in works that disclose an all-over, wet-into-wet, coming together of the surface.

Weaver’s work abounds with art historical and literary references, from Cranach, Georg Baselitz and Henri Matisse, to Homer and James Joyce. Interweaving symbols which are at once contemporary and eternal, her pared-back compositions speak to the female experience. Her ‘Mother’ figures recall Eve, Aphrodite or the Madonna as much as the everyday woman; while motifs of upright, drooping or swaying ‘Flowers’ attest to the full spectrum of human emotion. Despite their often monumental scale, the artist’s works evoke a tender vulnerability, proposing the act of painting as one of both performance and introspection.

‘I think that painting always has this paradox of making eternal something totally temporary. To me, that’s a kind of rare thing in the world […]. I think that painting has this very special ability to freeze one feeling and one very discrete amount of time forever.’

G. Weaver, ‘Eternity Captured in a Gesture’, Louisiana Channel, May 2025