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Natalie Chapman, an artist, has started a personal project called “All The Stories I Could Never Tell,” where she depicts her childhood memories through a collection of bold and autobiographical portrait paintings. She aims to create a more inclusive art world. Chapman grew up on the mid-Wales coast in a family with a lack of money, sporadic school attendance, and a parent who had a drug addiction. Her family moved to a home with no electricity before getting social housing in the 1980s.
Through her art, Chapman aims to break apart the stigmatisation of council house living. She does not want her exhibition to be poverty porn, but instead wants to reflect her experience on the margins of society. One painting, titled “If Only You Baked Cakes and I Went to School,” depicts a young Natalie in her childhood bedroom and is a tribute to the things she wanted as a young child, like an apron-smitten mother making scones. She also emphasises the importance of dreams, saying, “when you’re having to think about where your next meal is coming from… you forget what you wanted your life to be or what you wanted it to feel like.”
Chapman desires to spark conversation with her art and hopes that people can recognise themselves in her pieces. She aims to make the art world more inclusive and approachable and now works for a charity offering free art and music classes to youths aged 11-19. Chapman strongly advocates for more accessible creative subjects and wants all schools to offer such classes. She wants more galleries to be daring enough to showcase the artwork of the less privileged, stating that “there’s a lot of deprivation in Wales, there are many stories that aren’t being told on gallery walls.
Chapman believes the most profound and most interesting art comes from people who have faced and conquered challenges. Her latest show, which is her ninth solo exhibition, is at Canfas Art Gallery in Cardigan and will run until the end of November 2021. She sells her art online and teaches and frames her art from Gallery Gwyn in Aberaeron. Chapman’s career, she says, has come from “absolute perseverance.
Read the full article from The BBC here: Read More
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